Filed under: media industries 2, reflection, seminar | Tags: documentary, final, reflection, self assessment, seminar
Contribution and Collaboration
My contribution to the seminar was that of post-production, where it was Eric and my job to edit the seminar footage as well as consult with the steering committee. This role was mainly a 2-way collaboration, with little to no issues along the way as Eric and I worked well together to formulate the highlight video. We worked together in that I would formulate the structure and he would do the technical aspects of putting it together so our skills worked well together in terms of complimenting each other. Due to the nature of my role being within the post-production section, which I could only really contribute to after the seminar was over I also helped out in some of the pre-seminar tasks. This included coming up with a set of questions with Gabriel and Ruby prior to the event and also talking through with Candice the questions, once both our host and back-up host were ill. Therefore, the major problem that arose through the process of hosting our seminar was our two hosts becoming ill and not being able to attend the seminar. This required a great deal of team work in terms of going through the questions and key topics with Candice as well as being on top of all the other elements that had to go into play to put together a great seminar.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/editing-seminar-footage/
Proactive Learning
My proactive learning came in the form of going to see documentaries and also attending a masterclass on documentary filmmaking. I felt that I made a conscious effort to immerse myself in the field of documentary, which really helped when it came to formulating questions as I already had formulated some through my reflection on documentaries. In reflecting on the documentaries that I had seen as well as the masterclass allowed me to be more aware and also more involved in putting this documentary seminar in place as I felt that I already had key knowledge in terms of what made and didn’t make a documentary work. This also became incredibly important when it came to formulating the highlights video as I could dissect what was important in terms of relaying this to an audience. In conjunction I felt that I technically learnt some new skills in editing with Eric, the more you do something, the more you learn and I felt that this was clearly evident through this collaboration.
Participation
Most of our group collaboration and participation was done through a Facebook conversation in conjunction with our weekly class meetings prior to our seminar. In these collaborative environments it was difficult to participate fully due to the scale of the group and having all different members working in different areas. I was able to participate more when we broke up into our separate groups. In our separate groups participation was easier and there was a better dialogue happening between each of the groups, which worked a lot better. In terms of my own levels of participation I felt that I always made a conscious effort to respond to facebook conversations if appropriate and attend most of the editing sessions with Eric. However,I felt that I could have participated more in the final editing of our highlights video. Whilst I participated with Eric in the earlier editing sessions it got increasingly harder to make times that both of us could edit. I felt that I could have made a more conscious effort to finalise the edit with him.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/is-this-reel-life/
Connections and intersections
One of the most valuable things I learnt through putting together this seminar series is how happy people are to talk about what the are passionate about and that networking is one of the most valuable things to take out of this course. Being able to approach people, even if it is simply via an email can be really difficult and daunting, yet really there are a lot of people that are willing to help you out. In conjunction to this it is really obvious to me that the value of the seminar series, is that you learn a lot from a practical perspective the ins and outs of documentary, not just in terms of content, but how to realistically apply what we have learnt in subjects such as ‘True Lies’ and ‘TV2′ within an industry-based context. For instance, some of Dennis Smith’s real documentary scenarios allowed you an in-depth perspective on what it’s like to deal with difficult subject matters and how to ethically approach documentary scenarios. What I have learnt about myself is that I still find it incredibly difficult to network, to approach people and to be confident about what I am interested in and I think this seminar series along with my own Personal Networking Report have encouraged me to become more sure of myself and confident in the skills that I have learnt throughout this course. However, at the same time I have also figured out that my previous career interest in being a Project Manager is not really what I want to do anymore, because I feel I don’t have that extroverted quality in terms of contacting and speaking to people, which is needed for this role.
Overall, I found the process of putting a seminar together quite challenging, yet extremely rewarding, mainly due to the content delivered by our fantastic guests. In our hosts both not being able to make it I felt that I learnt a lot about not getting flustered and the importance of being really organised to put swift actions in place to resolve the issue. This ability to resolve an issue comes not only from yourself but from good collaboration between yourself and your group members.
After an incredibly unlucky start with both our host and back-up host both being sick I think our seminar went rather well, our guests were great and I really learnt a lot about documentary practice. It was great to get a different perspective from people who actually work within the documentary industry in Australia and have incredible insight into the process of documentary production and what documentaries are made up of.
Our seminar was good because our guests had a lot to say which was awesome, the worst thing would have been if our hosts got up and had nothing to say, it was almost that our guests had too much to say, which was also good as they were willing to go into a lot of detail about the documentary process. I also think there was good chemistry between our guests, especially Dennis and Steve because they had a lot of the same opinions about documentary and therefore could feed off each other throughout the seminar and create a conversation. Sometimes it was hard to include Natalie in conversation but Candice did a great job at focusing questions at Natalie to create a larger discussion through all three guests. I give Candice massive applause because she had to take the hosting job at such late notice and she managed to do a great job, even though some of her questions weren’t fantastically executed the guests were able to draw from the questions and we covered all the topics we wanted to cover in our notes.
Some feedback from after the presentation was that the skype meeting with Matt Bate was too long and I have to agree as it sucked up the time we wanted to spend on funding and the production side of documentary filmmaking. It also sucked up the time we wanted to spend on the Q&A, where I think we will lose marks on in the peer assessment I don’t think we really gave our audience enough time to ask questions, which was a shame as I think people were still keen to ask questions when it all wrapped up. I think if they skype meeting was perhaps 5-7 minutes it would have been better shortening the longer answers and keeping it snappy.
In terms of the content I really got a lot out of the seminar, especially in terms of this whole idea of ‘shape,’ where a documentary can really be interestingly about anything, yet what makes it interesting is how it is shaped and what part of the story is grasped and what is at the core of the story. I think this made documentaries really poetic and made me feel really confident about making documentaries. In fact, the overall experience of the seminar was really optimistic, in terms of both developing ideas and funding. I was really inspired by Natalie’s story because she literally scrapped money together and got funding right at the end and has made a documentary that has had a lot of success, so that’s pretty awesome. Another thing that I thought was really intriguing was how you get your subject to open up to you and different techniques to use, such as getting someone else to ask the questions, acting dumb or just taking your subject aside and getting them to open up like that. I think that getting ideas of tangible things to do is really good because having a really good subject is one thing and having them open up in front of a camera is another, so I thought that was really interesting.
Overall, under the world being against us circumstances our seminar went really well and Candice did really well at last-minute hosting and that’s super awesome. Next time I would have made sure that every person in our group knew the guests so that it didn’t seem so rushed, and that we could all confidently take on hosting.
This masterclass was very interesting in terms of gauging what it’s like to be a documentary filmmaker within the Australian film industry for so long. It was also interesting in terms of the moral issues documentary filmmakers face within very real environments. In True Lies we really looked at the moral implications but it was great to see how different it is within a real world tangible reality. These are the two main things I will focus on here as I found them the most interesting as well as useful in terms of what I would like to if I got the opportunity make documentaries about.
being an independent documentary filmmaker in Australia
If there is a pressing world crises that you want to document forget about getting it funded by any bodies in Australia. The process takes far too long, you need to just go self-funded. David Bradbury painted a very poor picture of the Australian media industry in terms of getting 1. your project funded and 2. getting it broadcast. These have been the main two problems for David Bradbury, especially considering his role as a political documentary filmmaker. A lot of his films touch on delicate highly political issues that sway in one direction or another, therefore he said that he finds it hard to sell his films to broadcasters such as the ABC. He said that even now after 30 years of making documentaries he finds it difficult to get his films on television even by the public broadcasters. This I find particularly interesting and if we get a person from the ABC or SBS it would be great to ask them what they look for in a documentary to allow it air time? Also if there is a funding body person at our seminar it would be great to ask them about how quick you can get funding if you really need to document a pressing issue? Can the funding process be fast-tracked to allow for the type of filmmakers such as Bradbury? In conjunction is it harder for political documentaries to get air time or funding due to their controversial political stance? Is it easier to get funding for a lighter documentary subject? and What about these two kids in the game how do they get their projects up and running? Do they see what they’re doing as sustainable? David Bradbury painted the Australian media industry in a very negative unhelpful light so it would be great to hear what these younger film directors think.
ethical and moral dilemmas
This was truly fascinating in terms of some of the moments David Bradbury chose to keep filming and I think it is really difficult and in that moment only when you can decide. What fascinates me and it was a question I kept thinking about but forgot to ask is the difference between the aware and the unaware subject. A lot of Bradbury’s key subjects in his documentaries were people that were within the media realm either journalists or photographers and also white western men who have the knowledge of cinema and how documentaries work and what they depict. When Bradbury was telling us about the photographic journalist he made a documentary about who didn’t want any information about his wife and his breakup being in the documentary and when Bradbury even started looking for some information the photojournalist completely stopped talking to him. What is the difference between a subject that knows and the subject that doesn’t about the process of making a documentary? What made me think of this is in comparison to the snippet of another documentary he showed being that of an Aboriginal community where he shot the people within this community. What I want to know between these two instances is the different relationship you form with your subject in terms of what you include and don’t include in the final documentary? What say does the subject have in how you portray them and there community? and in what moments is it obvious that you have the power as a filmmaker to shoot whatever you want? These questions draw obvious questions in terms of what Bradbury was saying in terms of you being a human and you being a filmmaker and where you sit on that spectrum at what point to you help the dying man and at what point do you film till? Do you film at all?
Overall, I found the masterclass really fascinating in terms of how Bradbury conducts himself as a filmmaker and always questioning where he lies in the spectrum between human and filmmaker.
Filed under: media industries 2 | Tags: documentary, PNR, reflection, survey
From filling in the Student Careers Survey I kind of realised the key areas that I am interested in being: documentary, transmedia, editing, producing and experimental works, which kind of run in with transmedia. I found these out through different ways that either related to what I was good at in regards to skills as well as what I enjoyed doing. I think it’s really nice to find a middle ground, sometimes what you are really good at is different from what you really enjoy doing or sometimes they come together, which is nice. In terms of documentary it is something that I know from TV1 and TV2 that I enjoy doing a lot more than drama, even though I enjoy watching drama it is an entirely different story for me when it comes to making, which I have already outlined. When I say transmedia I kind of mean it in a more experimental and not necessarily internet-based I see it as videos, which work and can be appropriated as interactive, participatory environments. Editing and producing are in line with what I have done in previous projects. Producing is one that I know I am good at, yet not sure I enjoy, even though I have strong organisational skills I lack that communicative skills in terms of contacting people, I find this extremely difficult. Editing I really enjoy because it’s like connecting the dots, like inserting meaning into your footage. I find the production side quite grueling, yet I think this is only within the making narrative case.
What I found particularly difficult with the survey was this idea of career goals, because I see the media industry as out of the realms of this idea of a set career, and more as floating careers. I don’t want to be locked into a certain career for the rest of my life, in fact it would be great if I could experience all of the things I enjoy doing. I don’t want to be stuck in a job that I hate, I also want to be doing projects that mean something to me. This is something I really learnt from my MI1 project last semester, in which I realised how important it is for me to take on projects that are ethically responsible, I don’t really want to work in advertising or areas like that as I see it as a bit of selling your soul.
What I want to do now from doing this career survey is to form my PNR around it and something I really would want to do is to get interviews predominantly with females. I think within the media industry it is a different story for females, and I think I would get more out of speaking to women in the industry rather than men. I think following the line of documentary will be relevant to me, and then perhaps I could focus on areas such as producing and editing documentaries as well as experimental takes on documentary. I feel that documentary would be a nice avenue to explore all my interests, yet I would approach it in a different way to how we are approaching it for our seminar group.
So, what I need to do:
1. Figure out exactly what I want to do for my PNR.
2. Look into the history of the area.
3. Write a list of people I would like to interview and then categorise them and draw a hierarchy.
4. Contact proposed groups of people starting from the top to the bottom, with appropriate emails and ways of addressing people.
5. When contacts are approved think of ways to interview each person in terms of questions and perhaps filming or recording the interviews.
Filed under: media industries 2 | Tags: documentary, howtodieinoregon, seminar
Just continuing my MIFF documentary analysis in order to come up with some ideas on what makes a good documentary and some questions that arise from that. How to Die in Oregon documents people effected by the law in Oregon, which was the first state in America to legalise physician-assisted suicide. The documentary is for the most part observational, with interviews weaved in-between, with the majority of the documentary focused on one woman’s lead up to the physician-assisted suicide as she suffers more-and-more from stomach cancer. This documentary is touching mainly through this one particular story and also interesting through the other sub-stories, which a small snippets of other people that are either for or against this suicide.
In comparing this documentary to Project Nim it is a lot rawer and gritty in terms of it’s style. The interviews don’t have the same creative flare, yet present a more humanised interview through interviewing people in their homes or gardens, getting right to the think of the action. In fact what amazed me about this documentary is how much it seemed like the documentary subjects trusted the filmmakers. The main woman that is in it is so emotional in front of the camera, that you really feel an emotional connection to her story, where you witness her deterioration both physically and mentally, witnessing her good days when she smiles and her bad days when she cries with such raw emotion.
What I learnt from this documentary was totally different from that of Project Nim as I feel the documentaries were attempting to do quite different things, in Project Nim the camera de-humanises the subjects through these stark interview environments, which reflects the nature of the story being the really how humans humanised a chimpanzee into misery, whereas in How to Die in Oregon, it was important to feel the emotional connection with these people as they drew closer to the day they would end their own life. Therefore, you really felt this trust between subject and filmmaker as this person is letting a camera document the most difficult moments of their life, their struggle and pain and really she would have never seen the finished film, which creates an interesting relationship between filmmaker and subject.
What I learnt:
- If you want your documentary to be about difficult moments in people’s lives or difficult emotional circumstances there really needs to be an integral trust between filmmaker and subject. I think a question to draw from this is: How does a documentary filmmaker gain the trust of his/her subjects, especially regarding extremely emotional issues?
- If you want your audience to feel emotionally engaged with your characters interviews and observational footage in their own environments works a treat. Having the subjects comfortable within their own domain is really important, especially when the subject matter is quite grueling. It makes you feel like you know the character better if you see their surroundings.
Filed under: media industries 2 | Tags: documentary, miff, project nim, seminar
Due to the nature of our seminar being the subject of documentary I thought it would be nice to go and check out some documentaries at MIFF. In order to find questions for the seminar I think it’s nice to think about what you like about documentaries or what type of documentaries you like and take questions from that to relate to how you make those certain documentaries.
Last night I saw Project Nim, which is a documentary about a project conducted by a scientist in the United States to see if you could get a chimpanzee to communicate with humans via sign. What the documentary did was document the chimp’s life from the perspective of all the humans involved. What really impressed me about this documentary was how beautifully the interviews were shot. Each interview looked like it was shot in the same studio which was really simple, yet the lighting was fantastic is this rather stark studio room. Technically another thing that really impressed me was the editing. Editing is really crucial to documentaries in terms of creating an overall narrative and I think the editing was so smartly done in Project Nim. What the editing did was connect the stories between the characters, where even though the different subjects were all interviewed separately the editing allowed for an ironic twist on each tale, that allowed the contradictions of what each subject was saying to come to the surface. To take this a step back there must have been careful planning in terms of linking each of the subjects together in terms of getting them to tell the camera the same stories as the other people involved in Nim’s life at that time, which meant that careful planning had to go into what questions should be asked. Or perhaps not, maybe it came quite organically how different the views were of each human participant in the project.
This leads me to my next point, which is how integral it is to have an interesting subject. In the case of Project Nim, it was not the chimp that was particularly interesting or the case of whether or not the chimp can learn to sign, but how odd these human subjects were and their relationship to Nim. When you think about it how can’t these subjects be interesting they all volunteered to treat a chimp how to human, to the point that the chimp greatly suffered. This created a nice conflict throughout the documentary between each individual human subject and the video recordings of the chimp deteriorating.
What I really learnt from this documentary was:
a) the importance of getting good subjects, Project Nim was so powerful because it managed to interview a majority of the people involved in Nim’s life.
b) that interviews need to be well shot. It was especially important for this documentary, because a majority of the footage was archival, apart from a few reenactments. I think it shows a level of sophistication, and makes a boring interviewing environment something spectacular and interesting.
c) look for the links and contradictions between each of the subject’s stories. This made the documentary so intriguing that it became more a documentary about human animalistic behaviour than the chimp itself.
d) something like text can really add to the visual dynamic of the documentary. Due to the theme of this documentary being on language and words, using text as a visual element, worked in breaking up the visuals. Font is important and how the text works on the screen is important, and also if it is relevant to the context of your documentary.
Therefore, I think a lot of the questions that come out of documentaries relate to two separate categories that link quite extensively, or maybe the question is simply this: what makes a good subject and how can you make this subject even more interesting?
Filed under: media industries 2, reflection | Tags: documentary, PNR, transmedia
This post is slightly postponed and should have been written way earlier but I have been horrifically sick so lets start today with possibly what may come to be quite a large blog post. The main thing I want to cover is how shocked I was that the masses still chose television and film and why this is. I want to talk about this as I think it is really interesting that after two and a half years in this media course, where we have covered all aspects of media production that there is still a lack of enthusiasm for transmedia projects. I also find this interesting due to the fact that a lot of media industry 1 projects were on these new media avenues and how film and television are adapting to these environments. To be honest I was really disappointed that everyone was still so determined to get into film and television when more than ever the media industry is an exciting place that is moving in exciting new directions.
I don’t hate film and television
This is the first point I want to make, in fact I love films and television but perhaps my interests lie more in watching than making. Throughout this course I have found narrative film making to be so confined to a set of rules of ‘how a film should be made’ in terms of how it should look and the correct process to go through to get to that finished product. I find this restricting to the way I want to work and maybe perhaps I am wrong about this point, but I find documentary and transmedia projects much more free in terms of creativity because film production, especially what we have covered in this course relies so heavily on technical perfection and getting everything right in terms of executing your pre-production plans. I like projects that open up rather than close in and I find that really rewarding with documentary and the online project we did last semester, where participants decided what direction our project went in. Therefore, in terms of defining my own media practice I really like the idea of projects expanding and morphing as they develop, not closing into an original idea, especially within the production component. Production for me should be more organic, where you have pre-production ideas and a plan but there is the freedom for those ideas to adapt and expand, or perhaps even completely change.
Transmedia
Or new media or whatever term we can use to describe where this media industry is heading or perhaps part of it and I think all of us as media students should be excited because it opens up more opportunities than ever for all of us as we head towards graduation. What excites me about transmedia is that we are the ‘experts’ we grew up on social media sites and we contribute everyday or every couple of days by blogging, everything you post online has the possibility to turn into an online to offline sensation and I think at the very least is a really great starting point in terms of getting your stuff out there. It is exciting also because I feel that you don’t have to start at the bottom in a job that you hate as you slowly work your way up to a job that you may or may not like. I feel like transmedia opportunities start wherever you want them to start, and you don’t need the funding or the money to go with it either. In conjunction I feel that this course has trained us really well in areas that other people would know nothing about, which makes us kind of ‘semi-experts’ in these fields. So when I think of the opportunities and think of all the amazing stuff I have seen online I ask myself why is there not a majority of us interested in this? And what I think is that people have the attitude that it’s not ‘real’ media that people respect, if everyone can do it using a webcam in their bedroom why should I waste your time? What I think of this is that if you make something AMAZING online it will get noticed over all the other stuff, if you put it in the right places. I also think it is so pretentious to think that it is not a worthy part of the industry because more people sit on the internet than watch movies, and more people are watching television online. What I am basically saying here is that the future of media production excites me rather than puts me off and I am excited at all the opportunities that I will encounter when I graduate.
What to take from this
I can obviously see from this my own interests in terms of the direction of my Personal Networking Report in either the fields of documentary or transmedia. So, transmedia documentary? I see these two fields as places that compliment my work ethic and areas that I would really enjoy working in once I leave RMIT.
This semester has been my best semester of blog engagement most definitely because I was most interested in this course. I feel that in the second half of the semester I have really worked on reflecting and blogging about the project itself, group work and resolving issues with our project, which I think was lacking with previous blog posts. I also think I have made every blog post worth it, none of the posts are rambly, well maybe a tad but they all are significant in terms of reflecting or sorting out information or just finding better ways to do things and actually thinking about what I have learnt, which I think shows my engagement with the course. As for that digital dossier it went very unnoticed and I regret that I didn’t make a conscious effort to watch some of those documentaries and was simply due to a lack of time and also my need to be really focused on our own project and our own editing that I got very wrapped up in this. In hindsight it probably would have been really worthwhile to step back from our project and see something else to get some editing inspiration or maybe something would click. However, I think I made a really big effort to use the screening and apply this to documentary on a general basis and my own preceptions of it. I think it is important to make the most out of everything you see or do and that does mean critically reflecting on these things because they do mean something. I also think it’s important to use your blog as a reference point, which shows through some of my more dull posts which just outline things we have to do or dot points about what I am thinking about. It’s good to write things down so you don’t forget and I did use my blog to do these kind of note taking exercises, though probably did not indulge into these further and explain them later in following posts. I also feel that I made a really big effort to reflect and spend the last week after our film was finished to really try to figure out what went wrong and right and what I would do better next time and also what I have learnt about my own filmmaking and what I enjoy or don’t enjoy. Therefore this is definitely my most personal blog because at times I almost feel that I am trying to find myself through writing, which I really enjoy and therefore I actually loved blogging. I articulate myself much better in words than talking through it so I also used my blog as a way to communicate with my group sending them links to posts because my blog got to the heart of what I was trying to express. Overall I got a lot out of blogging this semester in terms of cementing my ideas and sussing out if they are fading or solid ideas that can tangibly be brought into our documentary, which I am really happy about. On one final note: Documentaries are much more enjoyable to make than drama and I think in comparison to last semester that really shows through my blogging.
So how did our documentary go?
Well, I think this is a hard question to answer because every documentary was so different, yet I wouldn’t say that our documentary stood out because we didn’t do anything that different. The documentaries that stood out were the one’s that embraced their topic and explored it the best they could and I feel that perhaps ours lacked slightly, apart from that opening fact sequence which I was really happy with. Overall, I am really happy with our documentary because it is polished, has structure and tells a story of something that I am really passionate about and that I’m really glad I did because it definitely has that humanistic stance to it. A representation of the human spirit. Therefore I am happy with the story. I truly am. What I am slightly disappointed about was not making the most of the opportunity of perhaps not doing more. There were so many documentaries that took brave steps and made the most of the opportunity, collecting footage and having an array of material to work with as well as inserting themselves into the documentary and showing that they had learnt. I wish that we would have tried all these things to really experiment and do something different that also captured the essence of Maggie. However, in saying this it was difficult because Maggie was very limited in terms of when she was available and therefore it was hard for my group members to get to know Maggie as well as I did, which I think was difficult for them.
So what does all this mean?
Be brave, take risks and don’t be afraid. Documentary really inspires me and I loved making this project and was really happy with the way Maggie was portrayed in our documentary I thought it was very ethical and presented her as a 3 dimensional character that I was not simply defined by her homelessness, which was always really important to our group. Therefore, I think we show what we originally set out to show. I also think it shows Maggie in all her elements through sadness, happiness and just being funny, which is what characterises Maggie to me. However, I think our ideas started out better and had more movement and as our options became less and things fell through we didn’t embrace this as much as we should or thought of a new creative strategy, with exception to our cutaways which I thought looked amazing and broke up the interior-ness of Maggie’s interview. I guess we almost ran out of time to think up something amazing, which is disappointing but something I’ve learnt a lot from. I think it’s really important to always share your gut instincts because your other group members may love it or hate it but atleast you know and I think a part of me is always a bit scared to express my ideas. Next time I’d want to do something that really embraces everything that documentary can be because in True Lies there is such an array of documentaries and they can really be anything you want them to be and I think I would love to play with that more.
After the screening I realised a few things about documentary and my own preconceptions of it and I was really pleasantly suprised by how amazing documentaries can be and also what works or doesn’t work as well. In terms of what works and doesn’t I think there are three categories documentaries with really great subjects, yet the film doesn’t take full advantage of them. Documentaries with not that great subjects yet the film makes the most of it and documentaries with great subjects who make the most of the opportunity. And then everything in between. I also realised that you can make talking heads work and what about that issue of subtitles? These are all my points today.
So what works?
To be honest I have no idea because documentary is so subjective and therefore what’s boring to someone is interesting to someone else. Therefore, I think it is always important to be original with style and explore the notions of things away from stereotypical representations. Example:
Australia’s Outback: The Whole Hog
This was one of my class’s documentaries and I thought that it was executed exceptionally. I thought they did really well from the rough cut, especially the ending by showing that the narrator was still unsure about the issue and therefore stopped this full sense of resolution. However, I personally have a few problems with it that reflect nothing bad about the production itself because I thought it was really clever, but proves my subjectivity point. Basically, what I wanted was to be shown that these pigs were more destructive that they were a major threat and I never saw this and therefore I think keeping in the killing of the pig still seemed unjustified in my eyes. This is a subjective point for me because I don’t think you should just kill animals for the sake of it, or for the sake of humans, even though I could appreciate where the farmer’s were coming from, they’re still farmers and they were represented this way through the very stereotypical country music. I felt that I was not seeing anything different and I left a little bit disappointed, because I wanted to be convinced and just wasn’t.
Oliver’s Girl
Another one from my class that I thought dramatically improved since the rough cut because it felt so polished and had Oliver in it more. This is my example where I think the talking head really worked because it was mixed with this really well shot active footage of Oliver. By incorporating this in more I think they really overcame the whole talking heads is boring a repetitive scenario, which happened with some of the other documentaries and shows that going out and sort of voyeuristically shooting is really worth the effort. This is because in other cases such as Making It and 43 Days there was not enough variety because you didn’t see anything else and therefore couldn’t stay engaged with the story, well this is what I found. I also thought the cut from one actress to the other in Making It was really abrupt and would have been more worthwhile and I wanted to see more of them not talking to break it up and show more.
was a key topic in terms of the issues surrounding subtitles, which is always an issue, where a lot of people made the claim that it would have been a lot better if we could understand what he said, but look were these people really listening. I agree it was hard to understand him, however I think it is our obligation as an audience to make the effort, even if it is hard to listen or maybe watch it again. We had a similar problem with our documentary because sometimes Maggie is difficult to understand, but I would never have given her subtitles because it is totally disregarding what she really has to say and stops people from actually listening. Also it makes fun of her and her inability to be completely clear, therefore I really think they made a good decision with this piece.
And now into one last point, you always have to respect the person you are interviewing. I thought that maybe the last documentary about the woman that talked to animals was a little bit a ‘make fun of documentary’ and maybe the group should have made a better effort to know this woman away from this that defines her because I thought it was slightly 2 dimensional. Even though I think it’s great to point out the contradictions of what people say, I think you always have to consider what else makes this person and present them as a whole, which I thought was lacking in this production. You need to make your interviewees 3 dimensional.
