Lara Croft is a fictional character from the video game series

Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and

athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into

ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world.

That thing.. Lara Croft is a 10 minute mixed documentary that was

aired on BBC 2.

The documentary was about Lara Croft the video game, how the

media view the video game and Lara Croft as an fictional

character, the stereotypes surrounding ‘girl gamers’ and the

gender representation of Lara Croft as an idol.

The documentary was aired during the time that Angelina Jolie

was about to feature in a major Hollywood movie featuring the

character of Lara Croft.

This is another mixed documentary with a non-linear narrative format. It is a single strand and also a closed narrative.

The themes used throughout the Lara Croft documentary consisted of:

Virtual vs. Reality.

Representation of women.

Feminism.

Power of the media influencing society.

Gender representation.

Rapid change of popular culture in the UK.

Stereotypes of ‘girl gamers’.

Lara Croft represented as a idol.

Narrative structure consists of the traditional parts of a story and the order in which the reader encounters them; these provide a framework for the unfolding of the story.

The narrative structure in the Lara Croft documentary was closed, single stranded and non linear.

Consists of interviews and camera shots.

Non-linear as it doesn’t go in chronological order.

Closed narrative as all the questions are answered.

Single strand as it focuses on just one topic throughout which is the video game, Lara Croft etc.

Camera work is the process by which cameras are used to film a motion picture or television broadcast.

Interviews are filmed in medium close up and framed in the left or right hand side of the screen, however there is a big close up on Angelina Jolie in her interview.

There is a tilted frame shot in the interview conducted through the computer screen.

POV shot of somebody playing a Lara Croft video game.

Panning across people playing the video game.

Zoom in on magazine covers.

Conventional interview structure – medium shot, close up, bog close up, interviewee to left or right of screen.

Canted angle on laptop webcam interview.

Tracking and point of view shot when going into cyber café.

Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction. Mise-en-scène has been called film criticism's "grand undefined term“.

For the mise-en-scene green screen (chromakey), and visuals of the game being played was placed behind interviewees.

Front projection was used when the game is projected onto peoples faces.

Everywhere shown in the documentary had something to do with computers, to anchor the theme of the documentary. (Front projection: projection on to face of person and background)

Green screen is used to show video game in the background.

Interviewee is in front of projector as the screen is on his face.

Interviews with the game creator are superimposed onto a computer screen.

Sounds include music, sounds effects, dialogue, non diegetic &

diegetic sound.

In the documentary there is a voiceover at the start, which is the

voice of the target audience, an English male with no accent.

There is music used throughout the whole documentary. (This is

music used from the game and also dance music)

In the documentary there is a section where Lara Croft is related

to Madonna, a Madonna song is used there to anchor that point.

SFX’s are also used from the video games.

Interviewee doing the voice over.

Music from the video game.

Continuous fast moving electronic music throughout.

Madonna’s song was playing representing her as also a idol like

Lara Croft.

Mostly the editing just consisted of simple cuts to make sure that

the information in the documentary is not detracted from by

fancy editing techniques.

The creator (Toby Gard) of Lara Croft was edited in a computer

screen and in tilted frame to make him seem different to

everyone else.

Green screen was also used.

Fast motion is used when the scene shows someone going into

the cyber cafe.

They used a comparison with film footage vs. game footage.

Cutting from one shot to another.

Fast motion with cyber café suggesting it’s a fast moving

programme as gaming is quite intense and fast.

The background is out of focus occasionally.

Archival materials are information objects that serve as evidence

of past events.

The archive material used in the Lara Croft documentary

consisted of :

Lara Croft game footage.

Lara Croft film footage.

Angelina Jolie interview.

Websites.

Magazines.

Adverts.

Footage of the upcoming film adaption.

Interview with actress Angelina Jolie which was provided by the film distributor.

Simple white font.

No capital letters by using title in graphics anchors relevance to the theme of gaming.

Speech bubble title which suggests the programme is based around peoples

opinions.

Each interview is accompanied by text in one of the lower corners of the screen.

The text is always in a simple white font with no capital letters included.

Frequent use of the title ‘That Thing’ in the graphics.

This is used in the descriptions of the subjects relevance to ‘That Thing’ which in this

case is the Tomb Raider franchise.

All of the font is lower case.

The title is used for relevance a lot because it is prove that everyone is related to Lara

Croft one way or another.