See No Evil: The Power of True Crime Documentaries

As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, a documentary is a non-fictional moving picture with audio and a form of narrative that is intended to document reality with a primary purpose of teaching or preserving a historical record. As stated earlier, the researcher will be looking at a See No Evil as a true crime documentary examples to not only continue the theme of the case study, but also to determine the influential elements to provide a safe yet informative true crime documentary.

See No Evil is a true crime show produced by Saloon Media in Canada that features real footage of CCTV to assist in solving true missing person cases as well as dramatic reconstruction combined with unmediated testimonies from police, witnesses, and families. Produced by Ben Mole and narrated by Ross Huguet, as of 2021 there has been 6 series since 2014 with each episode having a duration of 40 to 45 minutes, airing via Investigation Discovery TV in the United States and Canada, then via Amazon Prime Video across the UK and mainland Europe.

The format of the show begins with an upbeat, light-hearted background on the victim in focus, through the use of reconstructions with actors and narration from the victim’s family and friends. The music used in this section is a piano with acoustic guitar and light drums, helping to keep the audience calm when introducing the story whilst the narrator Huguet’s voice softens. Then once the victim goes missing, Huguet’s tone appears deeper and faster with the narrator’s point of view changing to that of the investigator’s perspective, also the audio changes to a dramatic, fast-paced ‘bumper’ score. Each time the audience sees usage of the real life CCTV footage, the production uses non-diegetic ticking, heartbeats, sirens, synth stings to increase heart-rate and remind the audience that they are witnessing the final sightings of the victim before they met their tragic fate. Before each advertisement break, the narrator will leave the audience with a cliff hanger to return to afterwards.

Then once the crime is solved through the means of CCTV footage, the family and friends from the introduction return to perform eulogies for the victim. As it involves crying, a depressing piano track and real images of the victim instead of the reconstructions seen up until this point, this is when the realisation hits that many people have been affected in real life by the content you are witnessing on screen. Furthermore, unlike Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime, See No Evil uses no humour and no expletives. This showcases the seriousness of the message behind the production. All of these elements combined will raise the levels in fear of crime within the viewer massively.