How do documentaries hook viewers

For my first inhale I watched two documentaries and determined what captivates the viewer.

The Documentary Structure

In this Room to breathe project, I watched two documentaries to distinguish the structure of. In both of the documentaries, they included an unbelievable fact or story that just pulls you in right at the start. This causes you to want to keep watching the documentary. In both cases right after they talk to experts on the phenomenon or fact. 

They both talk about data and why and how things are happening. Throughout the documentary, in between talking to experts and things individual to each documentary. In both documentaries, you will find that after presenting data they always give evidence of what they are talking about. By now you can probably see that these two documentaries are very similar. In documentaries with an issue at hand then they might have a section about what we are doing or looking to the future. This is usually in the middle or near the end of the documentary. To keep you interested in the documentary, Sometime after the unbelievable fact, they give you proof of the fact or story with another story of someone else with the same issue. Since these are both documentaries about presenting research, there are experiments dotted in between different parts of the documentaries. In both documentaries to keep the audience engaged, they propose a question. Either what you can do or an “if this is happening how” question. 

Now we will talk about the things unique to each documentary. In the first one “The memory Illusion,” a documentary about psychology and how our memory might not be trustworthy. It has a lot of experiments and proof because the fact that our memory is flimsy and untrustworthy doesn’t quite sit well in the audience’s mind. In “Food for thought,” because it is talking about diet and people’s health there is already a lot of data. It also speaks about how we can change our eating habits and some healthier alternatives to our diet. 

The final verdict is that these two documentaries are very similar and just change it up slightly in between them to keep each episode feeling fresh and exciting. Well, it seems to be working well because lots of people are looking forward to season 58 episode 3!