John's Not Mad - Analysis

John's not mad is a human intreast documentary. That was commissioned by the BBC in 1989. The documentary follows the a sixteen year old teenager who has full blown Tourette syndrome. The documentary film has many codes and conventions which are essential to create structure for the duration of the film.

The film opens with an interview with John, who is the films central focus because the documentary follows his daily lifestyle and how Tourette's effects his life and the other lives around him.  During the interview john describes how he feels, living with the his disability.  The interview is a semi structured format which is a code and convention for an interview format. The voiceover then enters into the film. A voice over is a code and convention of filmmaking, a voice can used to tell a story or information about a person or a subject within the film, this method is most commonly used as a form of storytelling. The voiceover is done by a female presenter, the documentary has uses a female presenter because their voice can come across as synthetic and motherly, which is used to effect because of the sensitive subject matter of the film. When the film tells the audience about the facts and statistics about johns disability, it is voiced by an expert, which is interviewed later in the film. The expert in a documentary film is also known as the"voice of god" because they are sharing direct information with the audience.  The expert voiceover is also a male, the use of a male voiceover maybe be used because it's sounds instructive and authoritative. The documentary uses lots of observational footage, this footage shapes the documentary and is used in between the interviews. Observational footage is used frequently because this documentary is a human interest story.
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