Coal Mining Documentary – The Most Dangerous Job On Earth - Secondary Research

This is one of my pieces of secondary research for the Pleasley Pit Project.

Research:

The documentary is based in America and talks about the danger of coal mining and how dangerous it is for the Miners but also future and current problems within how pollutant Coal Mining is for the atmosphere due to coal being the most reliable source of energy providing the power for nuclear power stations which emit a lot of CO2 and sulphur/nitrate pollution into the air causing the rain droplets to contain sulphuric acid which is a future danger. Most Coal mines in the World still run in mainly Third World Countries however for how big the continent of North America is, both United States of America and Canada still run their coal mines instead of importing it from other countries.

The Most Dangerous Job On Earth Documentary -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-kbt8hheho

Establishing Shot

The Establishing shot has been used to give an overlook of the actual pit from above. This indicates and emphasises to the audience how big the actual pit is from above, never mind from below. Furthermore, it also makes the pit from above not look ugly by having a beautiful piece of scenery in front of the industrial park, destroying the stereotype of how ‘collieries’ or ‘coal mining stations’ are ugly and dirty. Also it sets the scene of where the documentary is taking place.

Aerial Shot

The Aerial shot has been used to emphasise how long of the carts of coal are, showing how much gets done on a daily basis. If this was shot on foot, it would’ve been so hard to capture

the full length of the carts because of how many carts there are and the shot would be ugly because nobody would want to count how many carts are being moved past the camera, instead an aerial shot visually shows that there are a lot of carts. This shot is important to the audience because it expresses how the coal is transported from the coal mines to land and where it heads off to for its next destination.

Mid-Close-Up

The Mid-Close-Up shot has been used to allow the lower thirds to be displayed properly, allowing the audience to make eye-contact with Dr. Stuart McGehee but also allows the

audience to read the information given about him that tells the audience what his job role is and where he works, alongside his name. This would make the audience feel more understanding and trust the information given from Dr. Stuart McGehee because the audience know his job role and because they know he’s got a profession in the information he’s giving out, it builds that bond between the audience and the documentary.

Long Shot

This is a Long Shot being used in this certain scene and what it does is, it emphasises how

many miners are working and trying to carry the weight of all the coal onto the carts. This would make the audience realise how hard the miners have to work because there is a theory in modern day that miners don’t really have to work as hard as they did before because it’s mainly machinery that collects the coal however this scene proves that the theory is false because of how many miners are on hand, putting the coal onto the carts.

Medium Shot

The mid-shot aka medium shot has been used to show the audience different job roles down in the mine and in this one, it’s fixing one of the coal cutters. It provides evidence to the

audience how physical working down the mines are and how the job quite clearly isn’t meant for a lot of people in this generation today because it means getting ‘cuts and bruises. The audience would feel sympathetic for the miners because they don’t or should I say, have an idea of how the miners are so used to this work and the audience would think it’s brutal because job roles in this generation mainly don’t have a risk of dying and their more office-based jobs.

Extreme Long Shot

The Extreme long-shot emphasises how huge the land mine is and in actual fact, it’s one of the biggest created on the world. With the truck being so small on screen, it really indicates

how big this land mine is when these trucks are huge in height and huge in width and you can compare it looking like an ant in comparison. This would make the audience feel safe in a weird way because the mining is now being converted into digging on land and making a massive hole rather than going deep underground and miners more likely having the risk of dying. However, the would feel sympathetic for the miners because this way of mining is becoming more common and collieries are closing down like in the UK, all of them have closed, so miners are losing their jobs and it is becoming more machinery in this day of age and less dangerous. You can even say, mining is losing its heritage status and a lot of miners would say that.