3 Minute Wonder

A 3 minute wonder is short television slot on channel 4 which broadcasts a three minute television programme aired in the middle of the channels prime time schedule. The three minute documentaries allow first time directors an opportunity to screen there work to a large audience, this provides the directors with a small step towards the competitive UK Film industry. There are also a few other projects involved in the scheme such as; FourDocs and Channel 4 Sheffield Pitch, which is a documentary competition. The three minute wonders may be short be they enable the viewers to get a decent understanding about the topic and after watching you are given information which you may of never known. The documentaries usually just involve one specific character such as Karl Pilkington who explains to the audience about different things which have occurred in his life. New directors are offered £4000 from Channel 4 to help assist them in making shorts. The documentaries are then aired at 7:55pm every weekday. The short films are primarily documentaries which highlight a current issue in the world but is very rarely noticed by the public eye.
 

This is one of my favourite 3 minute wonders by Karl Pilkington, it is a short documentary where Karl explores a museum and explains about life. The reason why i like Karl Pilkington's documentaries so much is because he gets straight to the point. He is interesting to watch because all though his points are so serious he includes humor. You learn a lot about life in this documentary and how the world has changed, Karl says and inspiring quote at the very start which was 'They say it all started with the big bang, but what i wonder is, was it actually a big bang or did it just seem big because there was no other noise to drown it out at the time'. This line really gets to the viewers and makes them think about the world.

This is another 3 minute wonder i found interesting. It is about a group of street artists who go round spray painting walls. The documentary explains how differently they work when with each other and how the paintings will be jumbled up if a the group are working on a piece together. Half of the group went to art school and actually have a degree in art, they seem to have no intention on caring about the public and how they are putting the prices down on buildings. They all have there own individual masks so they are not shown on camera. Graffiti to them is something they have always been interested in and they also sell paintings and sculptures as a job. They crew have all being doing graffiti since the 80's.

Here is a three minute wonder i chose which explains a woman's birth. This documentary explains how the woman found she was pregnant with the baby for 26 weeks but only thought she had a stomach bug from the flight back from holiday. The woman had a few tests and unfortunately she had a disease that affected the placenta, this meant that the doctors had to deliver the baby at 27 weeks, this gave the woman only a week and a half to realize she was having a baby. The baby had a lot of operations and tubes attached until finally the baby was breathing by herself and luckily two months later she was home with her mother. This story is extremely engaging and quite emotional but livens up at the end, this is a good way to share the story with an audience so they get in to the story but are not left upset at the end. 

This chart shows the listings on Saturday 16th April on Channel 5 from 12 pm - 12 am there was 6 documentaries aired, these 6 were together in a big chunk from 12 pm - 6 pm. The first documentary is 'Puppies Make You Laugh Out Loud' But the following 5 are all of the same series which is 'Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away'. All of these are grouped together around peak time which enables them to grab more viewers.




This is the listings on the same date on time but on Channel 4. You can see from the chart that there is only one documentary shown within the 6 hours. The only documentary on within these hours is A place in the Sun which is on within peak times. This is a documentary involving property experts helping homeowners choose whether to invest in properties.

This is a chart which shows the TV viewings in March 2016 for the different genres on Television. Documentaries is the third most viewed genre which proves that the public have a high interest in documentaries. I had a slight glance at the previous month's and the percentage of viewers and nothing has really changed which proves documentaries are watched by a wide range of people.