The WI Ladys Guide to Brothels

The first documentary I studied was the E4 programme ‘THE WI LADYS GUIDE TO BROTHELS’ where the Hampshire WI members Jean Johnson and Shirley Landels lead 7,000 strong members to advocate the legalisation of brothels in Britain. They are joined by journalist Nicky Taylor who helps them find out what makes the best practice brothel and how the laws need to change to create one in the UK.

I found the following conventions were used to create this particular documentary:

• Close up camera shots to emphasise facial expressions
• Side view close up shots of important figures in the programme
• Prompts by the narrator to get the responses she wants e.g. ‘Is it places like this?’
• Talking to students who are ‘mostly addicted to Class A drugs’. Prompts again by the narrator e.g. ‘do you not find it dangerous’
• Expose of prostitutes; ‘I’ve been raped’ ‘I’ve been knifed’ 
• Judging the subjects the entire time- mockery by the narrator
• Camera angle: looking down on them to make them appear vulnerable
• Careful editing: chosen the most explicit content and the worst cases/people to represent it negatively
• Big question: How can we make Brothels in Britain legal? This is discussed and researched throughout the documentary. At the end, there is a campaign to raise this issue and present it to the Prime minister
• Camera shots: newspaper articles- pictures becoming bigger and bigger as if moving towards you to emphasise the dangers- to make you sympathise with them
• Editing- from one place to another
• Interviewing pole dancers- to gain the information they need in their research
• Set up- window brothel experiment- pretending a Brothel is going to open
• Camera angles: blurred or just showing the waist downwards because some subjects do not want to be exposed
• ‘Im shocked… they seem normal’ showing the narrators negative representation
• Negative representation; mocking them: ‘Proud of being bunny of the year’