Dawn Porter: presenter style model

After looking at some of the techniques used in documentaries to create certain effects, I now aim to decide what particular image to create for the presenter in my piece. I feel this is a very important aspect that impacts the overall success of documentaries.

I looked at Dawn Porter as a style model as she is known for her interactive style documentaries which I feel will be successful to adopt when I produce mine.

I decided to analyse her website 'Dawn's World' and blog 'The Dawn Report' to look at the ways she uses media language in her entries. This would then enhance my understanding of her particular style and characteristics to replicate in my production piece.

Firstly, I analysed the Homepages of 'Dawn's World' focusing on the language features she adopts to convey her personality:

This page was very useful as it provided me with certain elements I could use when scripting the narrative for the presenter in my documetary. To provide further insight, I looked at her blog entries posted on The Dawn Report.

This particular blog entry highlights that Dawn adopts a friendly tone in her writing even when talking about a serious issue such a Breast Cancer. She also opens up about her personal feelings which creates a close, familiar relationship with her audience. I feel this is an effective approach to use as this is what makes her a likeable character.

Here, Dawn is discussing a stereotypical topic 'shoes'. She is quite opinionated and this is shown throughout her writing but again she ensures she adopts a colloquial tone. Her common use of rhetorical questions is essential to engage the audience and therefore an effective technique.




I also looked at the language she uses on social networking sites such as Twitter. Here, her tweets illustrate that she has a humorous personality, not taking herself too seriously which reflects the character she presents whilst filming.

As I am going to analyse an episode of her documentary 'Extreme Bride', I looked at interviews about this to see if I could gain further understanding about the way she presents herself and what effect this has on the subjects.

Below is an interview with the TV channel 'Really'.

Her responses show that she finds it hard not to judge the subjects she interacts with, however, to be successful you need to remain objective. Therefore, I will ensure that my presenter does not show any signs of judging the people she talks to.


Her interviewing style has been referred to as quite 'blunt' but she ensures she tells the subjects she is going to be honest and therefore shows good and bad parts in her documentaries. This is an effective approach as she ensures she gets the right responses and doesn't ask questions that may offend her respondants. I am going to ensure my presenter uses this style.

Above is another question taken from an interview with journalist Emma Knock. I wanted to find out if Dawn acted differently whilst presenting. It appears that she is herself throughout but tones down her sense of humour as she doesn't want this to interfere with the content of the documentary.