Paul sent us an email saying that perhaps we could also reflect on the course; what is good, bad, etc. I liked this course a lot better than I liked TV1, I think because I found making a documentary more interesting in terms of being creative, where with TV1 I felt it was very structured and left very little movement for creativity as we were meant to be Hollywood directed. Therefore, documentary was always going to be better, especially after studying True Lies, because I felt I came with an advantage in knowing all the things you could do with documentary, and how creative it could be.
the lectures
I thought the lectures were great, especially because we watched so much stuff. Robin’s lectures were great because they just showed us an array of different documentaries that we could refer to, and watch, which is what you want. I get the most inspiration out of watching what other people have done, so therefore watching previous years tv2′s documentaries was also really great and really important as it allowed us to see what we were capable of doing, because really some of them were amazing. I also thought the more technical lectures by Paul were really great, because that’s something we didn’t cover in True Lies and something we really needed to know when making our own documentaries. Liam’s lecture on ethics was also great, which brought in the ethical considerations from True Lies but applied it to our own documentaries. Overall, I was truly impressed by the lectures they gave us a full grasp of the course and were really helpful as well as inspirational in terms of some of the snippets we saw.
the tutorials
The three exercises we did were great in thinking about documentary and applying it in a practical manner. It also broke up the intense planning of our own documentaries. I think I really learnt a lot from these exercises and then was able to apply them later on. In fact I think we could have done maybe one more of these exercises, perhaps focusing on sound, even though the observational exercise did cover this I think soundscapes are really important to docos and I would have loved to kind of explore this further. As always all the technical stuff was covered really well from camera to lighting to sound, which we could then apply to these exercises and see where we needed to improve. In one of the last lectures, it may have been the last Paul showed a clip from Forbidden Lies where green screen was used. I think it would have been great to cover some more creative technical techniques that we could of applied to our docos, especially in the case where some of our docos were restricted to talking heads. Therefore, I think just even being made aware that we can do these things earlier on. In conjunction, I really liked Robin’s idea of showing a doco at the beginning of each tute, and I think this should be continued and span through every tute for the semester applying to whatever we cover that week. It gives something tangible to think about and talk about in the tute, because in the lecture we don’t really discuss the clips we see we just listen. Maybe, to place more emphasis on the digi doss we should use this to watch in class, because I feel that it is almost forgotton.
the readings
Some of these readings did cross over with True Lies, yet again the Rabiger ones were really great in terms of pre-production and making sure you’re really ready to film your doco. I also like that the readings stop in week 10 as it gives time to really focus on the editing process. Even though, some of the readings are a bit dry there are ones such as the interview readings with filmmakers that really made me think about what we were doing, and if we were doing it in the right way. Without, the readings I don’t think I would have thought about our doco as much as I had and I really think there needs to be more emphasis on doing the readings so that your group members are as engaged as you are. However, sometimes they are long and you don’t have time.
overall
I’m very pleased with this course, even though I do think it is the most time consuming and really is a lot of effort. However, I think that it is structured extremely well and that you have all these people around you to help you out whenever you need, which is my way of saying the staff are very accessible. I also think that all those how to movs and handbooks are so crucial and without them I don’t think we would have ever be able to export, etc. I feel that a lot of time goes into making this course a good one.
Forbidden Lie$:
Forbidden Lie$ is used by Paul as an example of great editing, rather than the documentary working as a whole itself. He suggests that some of the footage shot in Forbidden Lies was done in the editing process and that we need to remember that there is always this option. He suggests that the edit in Forbidden Lie$ is extremely complex and therefore would have required a complex paper edit using a transcript. He also talks about how well the dialogue is cut together to overlap itself, yet weaved together effectively. Also think about how you can use sound effects in a documentary to convey meaning and create dramatic tension.
When using different dialogue from different people it’s important to link the dialogue together effectively where it seems like the two interviewees are running off each other, almost like a conversation without direct interaction. One of the interviewees is giving context, while she talks about her feelings in comparison to that. The two interviewees are used as a juxtaposition.
File Management:
This is a life skill that spans through all work places, whether editing or admin work, etc. It is important to file stuff in a way that is logical and understandable. If you make a mistake never replace the file, instead make a file named ‘to trash’ to make sure you don’t loose anything or accidently delete something before you think about it. Make sure that you make a Media Managed copy of your documentary, even though it’s not required you must do it. A media managed project consolidates your project and compresses it to a smaller file that is easier to work with. If you don’t have enough space to store your entire project it’s best to media manage and therefore you can access your project. If you need to add anything to your cut then you can just go back to your tapes instead of storing every captured clip on your hard-drive/computer.
Making DVDs:
To make a quality DVD you need to export using compressor. Compressor and Final Cut Pro work well together in that it will automatically save files where you want them to save, that you have set in Final Cut Pro. Compressor is relying on the fact that we’re not going to notice what the compression loses.
on markers:
If you want to put in chapter markers you can do that on Final Cut using the normal markers option and then clicking the add chapter marker, which can be used to skip through your film.
DVD Studio Pro:
Be wary that other films will use the same templates and it won’t be original. Think about just keeping it clean, with just one button. You have to make a 4:3 mpeg2. Just keep it at 4:3 otherwise it will double squash. Make sure your display mode is set to 16:9.
Build rather than burn your project. You can test these files by dragging them into the DVD player to see if they work. To burn your project use TOAST.
TOAST:
Use Toast to burn your project. Just select the Video_TS and burn. You can click ‘fit-to-DVD video compression’ to fit the files onto your DVD.
Timing.
There is a spiritual discipline to documentary editing.
Being organised, attacking it methodically and creatively.
One must set aside all the intentions one held so dear, purify one’s heart of all the passions connected with the shooting, and confront the materials in a spirit of open-mindedness.
For nothing outside the rushes is relevant to the film you are going to make; you must find your film in the given materials, yet remain loyal to your central vision.
This is why documentaries are written and we deman that you are clear about your intentions in pre-production.
Flexibility
Being able to restructure
To be able to scrap prior work if assumptions become obsolete
To be able to utilise serendipity
Mobility
Paper edit- easy to move, realign segments of our doco
In Final Cut- set yourself up in a way that you can be flexible, mobile and maintain as much objectivity as possible
Objectivity
Keep someone probably outside he group or staff fresh for an objective point of view
DO NOT finish in week 14 with one sequence
Logging then capturing rushes in FCP
Sitting down and watching your footage and fill out a log sheet (rough log).
Viewing rushes- this an be done in logging in FCP
- note as you go: what information emerges, what you find yourself thinking, feeling when watching a particular scene, look out for your gut feelings
Making transcripts
- interviews and conversations
- selecting sections from transcripts- cutting and pasting, finding in and out points
- or quick summary of each sentence or paragraph
Paper edit- can be a word doc n harddrive
- Why paper edit?
- Why assemble?
- Why different sequences?
- crucial to propose overall structure
- not get lost in details
- for that objectivity, flexibility and mobility needed for ordering and restructuring
First Assembly
- put film together as per paper edit
- keep it long, rough, repetitive
- important to see whole film in long loose form before doing any detailed work on particular sections
Rough Cut
Fine Cut
Finishing
- Colour grading
- Sound mix
Outputing
deck on>fire up final cut>monitor to component>shift Q ctrl Q.
Have a date at the top and continue down the page.
Ctrl U is the standard edit layout.
You can’t have too many bins.
How to use markers to make sub-clips:
M for marker, and press M again will bring up the Edit Marker box (How to video on blog)
SHIFT Up and Down arrows takes back or forward to other markers.
- When you open up the clip the marked points will open in the clip.
- Question in the Name of the marker, answer in the Master Comment.
Nested sequences:
- SHIFT Z brings in the whole window
CTRL V cuts at the point through visual and audio.
- Journey of the story (postly the participant’s journey, often past)
- Participant’s journey in making the film
- Filmmaker’s journey in making the film
Forward movement, transformation in some way. Often hard to achieve in a short film. What is the story of the film itself? You’ve got more than the journey of the character from past>present>future however you’ve got the filmmaker’s journey and the subject’s journey of being part of the film.
Memento Mori (VCA student film)
Three part drama equilibrium>breaking the equilibrium>moving beyond it to closure. Classic structure. Two aspects you need to think about in your story, what is the theme of the story, what is it really about? Look for the little details that put colour in the story. Truth is stranger than fiction, what people come out with can’t be written.
She is making a journey in the making of the film, comes to her own conclusion within the film, what is your subject revealing to you?
Filmmaker’s journey is not explicit. However, by the subject revealing intimate details shows that the subject trusted the filmmakers and that it was a trusting relationship, where the subject was treated ethically.
Hope (Steve Thomas)
The filmmaker discusses what the subject wants, achieving things that she wanted within the realms of his film, eg. the video clip that she wanted to be in. He also analyses her feelings and talks about how she was overwhelmed by her own story. The filmmaker talks about how he met her.
After tolerating my earnest filmmaking intentions for a while Amal told me what she wanted to do. She wanted me to film her walking by the River Yarra in the heart of Melbourne, because it reminded her so much of the Tigress.
His intention was to not put the video clip in the finished film, yet it became important to him and changed his vision. It was important that it was contained in the film because it expressed a lot about her relationship with her father and how he saved her. Shows that you need to be willing to change your vision, it’s more about what they want than you. Think about it more as a collaboration, more about being with them, than being about them.
Remember: they are not actors to be used as fodder, they are giving part of their lives and experiences to you and you should treat them accordingly.
- No heroes & villians (don’t simplify into black and white divisions. Remember their story will not be just a simple case of heroes vs villians as there are a lot more things in play)
- Rounded human beings vs stereotypes (make sure you present your subject as complex, try to break the stereotype, find something that is unusual that will break down the stereotype)
- Tendency towards victim films- can be avoided if you promote self-advocacy (via collaboration) Does you subject have something to say about the world that breaks their position as a victim. Can they speak for themselves? Promote this.
- Look for contradiction and paradox ie. the human condition (look for the conundrum that makes your story more human, don’t ignore them)
What moments in the film does the character’s expression/emotions change is their body language/facial expression contradicting what they are saying. These are the most interesting moments, DON’T IGNORE THEM!
Does your character see themselves as a victim?
9 Hours of Conversations with Victims of the Holocaust
Sometimes it’s better to keep it simple. Simple, yet profound. Moment of documentary truth as what the character says is completely contradictory to what you think he will say. What is the character saying that the audience isn’t going to expect?
Vertical movement in you film: The direction of your film is horizontal. Things that don’t add to the narrative horizontally are vertical movements, trangressions. For example when she takes a drink and doesn’t realise that she was being filmed because the filmmaker didn’t say action. The filmmaker decided to keep it in the film because it conveys something about her view of filmmaking and her love of movies. It’s a moment of vertical movement. It may also present something about her being a performer. Says something about both subject and filmmaker.
This week Paul’s lecture focused on copyright, especially in consideration of fair use. He sent us some links to have a geeze at. What I looked at especially was examples of successful fair use in documentary. I chose this because I thought it was the most relevant and gave tangible examples of how we can use fair use in our own documentaries.
Category 1: Employing Copyrighted Material as the Object of Social, Political or Cultural Critique
The example used here is Afluenza, which shows an advertisement getting critised in relation to consumerism. It shows an advertisement about shopping, with a voice over critiquing it in relation to the rise of consumerism. I assume that this form of Fair Use is used on television programs such as Today Tonight, The Gruen Transfer, etc. where advertisements are critiqued in relation to their social position.
Category 2: Quoting Copyrighted Works of Popular Culture to Illustrate an Argument of Point
This one is a bit more murkier, where a documentary filmmaker uses copyrighted material as it ‘illustrates some argument or point that a filmmaker is developing.’ The text gives an example being how a documentary may show an excerpt from a fictional film to illustrate a point about ‘changing American attitudes toward race.’ There were numerous examples of this category, where the documentaries used excerpts from films, video games, advertisements, album covers, television shows, magazines, etc. They all use these excerpts to convey a certain argument and use the examples as evidence to substantiate and build their argument. In the Game Over example their are excerpts from numerous video games in chronological order from old to new as evidance to prove that video games have become more violent.
Category 3: Capturing COpyrighted Media Content in the Process of Filming Something Else
This covers the incidental capturing of something, such as a poster in the background, radio playing, etc. and that by removing these things the documentary is moving away from capturing ‘reality.’ This area is murky, where Paul pointed out in the lecture that if these materials enhance your documentary it may not be covered under fair use. How do you tell if the radio was just on or turned on by the filmmaker to enhance the mood? From the examples it becomes apparent that if the documentary filmmaker is not using the sound exerpt as part of the film soundtrack it goes under fair use. For example in The New Americans Israel Nwisdor whistles along to a George Strait song. The clip shows him in the car whistling to the song that is playing on the radio to show Israel’s everyday life as an American in a motorbike stares at Israel as a moment of racial discrimination. This clip seems accidental as the purpose of this shot and its inclusion in the film seems to be to show this racial discrimination and how Israel stops whistling the moment the American stares at him. Therefore, the song itself is unimportant, it could be any song. This is why it seems that the filmmaker could claim fair use.
Category 4: Using Copyrighted Material in a Historical Sequence
This seems even murkier, even though it seems the most logical. It claims that the only way to convey historical events is to show excerpts from that time to convey these historical points. Again there are numerous examples to tangibly convey this. For intstance, in Citizen King the filmmaker used an extended excerpt from Martin Luther King Jnr’s speech I Have a Dream. The King Estate who owns the speech refused copyright privledges to the filmmaker, yet the filmmaker claimed fair use as the speech was historically critical to his documentary. The excerpt is crucial because the interviewees talk about being there and witnessing that moment and therefore it seems integral that the audience can also feel the strength of this historical moment.
I assume this is used in a television show that I watch called Mad Men that is set in the 1960s to get a sense of a being in that actual time and space the television show uses real excerpts to convey certain moments in history that are integral to the shows plot line. For instance, the show used footage from JFK’s assasination.
Conclusion
From reading and watching these clips I have a greater understanding of what I can claim under fair use and that if our group sticks within these limitations I feel that we can use material in a way that can be claimed under fair use. However, I also understand that this is not a black & white area, where this article didn’t point our explicitly what you can’t do.
Reference:
School of Communication American University 2010, ‘Examples of Successful Fair Use in Documentary Film’, Center for Social Media, viewed 19 September 2010, <http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/related-materials/teaching-materials/examples-successful-fair-use-documentary-film>
This week’s lecture covered three areas of documentary being copyright, sound and deconstruction. As always I will write up my notes and do a further blog post that goes into more detailed analysis.
Copyright
Creative Commons for archival footage
Copyright is based on the US system.
Fair Use:
- how much you’re using and why, you are not allowed to use it how it is meant to be used, only for critique and parody.
- Therefore, you are not allowed to use a clip, song, etc. that will enhance your movie, unless you have copyright privledges.
- It is a grey area, step back and think about how you are using your material.
Think about seeking permission, it is not as hard as you think.
Make sure you have your copyright sorted so you can easily enter your film in festivals.
Sound
- Always test your gear before you go out
- Always monitor properly
- Avoid echoey environments
- lapal mic- make sure the volume levels are correct, will only give good sound in a quiet location
- Shift the boom to the interviewer when they ask a question
Deconstruction
CHINESE PHOTOGRAHER
- clear dialogue with music with the peeling of an apple
- one camera numerous shots, don’t be afraid to capture other things whilst filming the interview, you don’t need to capture your subject at every moment.
DRINKING FOR ENGLAND
- comfortable surroundings
- how is everything working together?
PURPLE HEARTS
- framing
- the use of subtitles
- natural lighting using windows, moving furniture to get that lighting
I thought today’s lecture was extremely important and informative in terms of defining the relationship between yourself as a filmmaker and your subject and again brought up the complicated aspects of ethics that was highly relevant in True Lies last semester. In terms of our documentary I thought a lot of key points became relevant. When I was first considering this documentary idea I had an ethical dilemma being what you do and don’t show in terms of your subject. For this I will bring in an example from Bastardy, a documentary that I talked about here. Bastardy opens with the main subject Jack telling the camera as he goes to inject heroin into his arm that he wants the camera to see this and that this is so big a part of his life that there would be no point hiding this from the camera. I think this is a brilliant way to get around some ethical issues concerning drugs and alcohol. The reasons for this is that it is obvious you are not exploiting this character by representing them in a negative way, and clears up this fact for the audience. In terms of what we learnt in True Lies this is about being reflexive of not hiding the fact that the camera is there.
So how is this relevant to our documentary?
I think when you’re dealing with people that are marginalised in one sense or another it is important to tell them exactly what they’re getting into and what they want to show about themselves. Obviously, Jack wanted to show that being a heroin addict was a major part of his life, yet the director wanted to portray this in a way that put the ethical issue onto the subject and made the subject aware that this could be an ethical issue and therefore needed to be justified to the audience by the subject himself. This is an extremely relevant point and I think that these are moments where it is important to be reflexive to ask the subject a simple question such as is it ok if we film this? Do you want this to be in the film? Or something along the lines of why is it necessary that we show this in terms of its significance to your life? If you cover these questions and keep them in the final version of your film as these profoundly reflexive moments you not only cover yourself ethically but you add another layer to your film that shows a trusting relationship between the filmmaker and subject that shows the audience that you as a filmmaker are being sensitive, especially when dealing with people that can be easily manipulated due to their lack of film knowledge.
In this sense it is highly important to go through a process of informed consent, which was something that was discussed in the lecture, of letting your subject know why you are filming them. In our case this is easy because we are not out to exploit, our purpose is to raise awareness and therefore it seems incredibly unlikely that we would want to negatively portray our subject. However, it is important to make this clear to your subject and to get to the heart of what you want your documentary to be about. I think this also guides your subject to hit on certain stories that will be deeply relevant to your, but I think in our case our subject’s cause as well.
For me a perfect documentary is this meshing of causes where you as a filmmaker has the same objective as the subject. In our case we want to raise this awareness about this hidden aspect of homelessness being women, and our subject also wants to do this to reveal herself as a component of homelessness and to show people that homelessness can be overcome to some extent. It is her story, but it is also our story and I think this is extraordinarily important.
What are ethics?
Captured in the law. It is important to talk about because a lot of ethical issues aren’t captured in law.
GOOD WOMAN OF BANGKOK (Dennis O’Rourke)
Essentially the film is a about a filmmaker that hires a Bangkok prostitute and challenges documentary ethics more than most other documentaries. Challenges the distance between filmmaker and subject and breaks that distance into subjectivity away from all objectivity.
Truth is always contested. Documentaries are not unmediated reality, they are representations of reality.
The mediation of reality:
- the presence of the camera. Change of behaviour in front of the camera. Some filmmakers become explicit about the camera being there.
- exclusion. The view of a documentary is always partial, not impartial. You’re always excluding certain events based on decisions that you make. Framing excludes things. The simple act of you turning on and off the camera. The major exclusion process is in editing.
- manipulation. Especially at the editing stage, constructing the reality of the scene. Compression and making things quicker. Juxtaposition, changing the meaning of things.
What are the moral/ethical risks in documentary film-making?
Because there is a lot of trust involved. Respect the trust that the subject has given you to film them. How are you going to respect that trust in the film you make. If you’re filming some form of observational manner, to what extent to you maintain the distance, what is your ethical position?
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.
Ethical consequences of portraying an event in a certain way.
How do you film people in a way that is fairly, that they think is fairly?
The film Stolen had great political impact, yet tricked the subject unethically by paying them money. The whole issue got very contraversial. At the Melbourne Film Festival they re-cut and changed the subtitles of the film. It immerged that the cameraman on the film didn’t allow them to use certain footage because they were unethical. It was re-subtitled due to a complaint by the subject that she didn’t say that.
‘What do we do with people when we make documentaries?’ (Nichols)
Issues are raised when we ask them to pretend that the camera isn’t there. In the art of documentary there are two unwritten contracts:
- A contract between you as a film-maker and your subjects.
- A contract between you as a film-maker and your audience, and what you want to present to them.
At the heart of your film is the relationship between you and your subject(s). The question is why does anyone want to participate in a documentary?
You know them. Publicity. Interested in the issue. Ego. Interested in filmmaking. Interested in the filmmakers.
Informed consent.
- participants should be explicitly told of the ‘possible consequences of their participation.’ (Nichols)
- you need to let them know what is involved. There are situations where this gets very difficult, especially if you’re trying to expose something, especially regarding political issues, or some type of wrong-doing.
- is it appropriate to film illegal acts? Are they aware of the consequences of what they are doing on the film.
- what is the filmmakers obligation to their subject? What is more important?
Release form.
It is important to do this to cover yourself, or a defence to cover yourself. However, make it an informed consent. Make sure they know what they’re getting into. They at any point can decide to not want to be in your film. Manage the relationship as much as possible, your film depends on them. They have a right to tell you to turn off the camera. Let them watch the rough cut, but they don’t have editorial control. The right to request certain material is not used. Yet, you can defend yourself.
How will the making of the film change the life of your subject?
CUNNAMULLA (Dennis O’Rourke)
They took him to court and sued him because he didn’t have informed consent. Legal battle that Dennis O’Rourke lost. Essentially it gets down to an issue of informed consent, that we as an audience don’t know what really happened.
Contract with the audience.
I speak about them to you
It speaks about them to you
ELVIS AT THE MARKET
The subject is vulnerable, and therefore shows how the filmmakers film him and therefore is a high degree of trust. You need to get around the issue of making fun of someone. Making judgements on how you portray your participant(s).
With cinematography it is valuable that your images link to the overall documentary. There is no point getting beautiful images if they don’t relate. You need to be able to control the image. You need to be ready, prepared with the right equipment, but also with the right mental preparation to be prepared for adverse conditions.
What is possible?
Dennis O’Rourke’s example shows that anything is possible. He is literally positioned on the boat with a heavy camera and sound. He managed to get that personal close footage and also maintained an interesting aesthetic.
Because documentaries can take any form, so can the cinematography. You can approach making the documentary in any style you want. Documentary has moved above the hand-held camera, no lighting aesthetic.
Gypsy film: This shows that the skills learnt for making a fictional film, can also be used or adapted for your documentary film. Be aware of the equipment you have access to and choose accordingly to what you need to use the camera for, you may want to utilise different cameras for different situations within your documentary.
Steer away from using automatic functions. It’s about controlling the picture as much as possible to create the best possible aesthetic for your project. This is vitally important as you want to be in control of your picture.
Automatic focus: It focuses on the centre of the frame and defeats creative composition. You need to look after your focus, think about who will look after the focus. Get in the habit of knowing distances for which you achieve focus. Think about focus pull in terms of people getting up and walking, because it’s a documentary and people will most likely to walk around. You need to work out which way is towards infinity and which one is towards smaller numbers. The camera person needs to know and memorise this according to the different cameras. If it’s hand-held you wont want to turn the camera around, it will be clunky. Think if you want everything in focus or if you want to focus to go in and out and not be perfect. All these creative focus options are only available with manual focus.
Exposure: Think about using the mini monitor if it’s going to help your project. Remember to set the view finder to your own eye, so it’s more accurate. Use zebras to to keep track of your exposure and change it while shooting to maintain exposure. Don’t be afraid of under-exposure for aesthetic reasons, but be careful about over-exposure.
Quince Tree of the Sun: A lot of emphasis on composition and frames within frames as a compositional tool. The camera is not hand-held but static or smooth, capturing moments between people. Creating parallel action through post-production, was it planned? Did these moments occur at the same time? Probably not.
Camera operation: The view-finder is extremely useful, however you can’t judge exposure or pick focus. You need to move yourself into the camera and put yourself in the position of creator. You need to be physically engaged with the camera look through the lens.
Hand-held camera work: Think about which camera will best suite your hand-held camera work. A bigger camera may be more useful because it is more steadier. At shoulder height perhaps think of using the bigger camera. Have a try and test different cameras to see what works better for you. A heavier camera may be better.
Interviews: Good interviews may be the result of good research. Don’t believe the research will give you the answer, everyone need to listens, you may need to adjust in terms of the answer to the question. The camera position you have may not be appropriate. You need to adjust the frame all the time. example: Hearts and Mine never unlock the pan and tilt you need to change. The camera is constantly re-framing as the interviewee moves, the camera seems to predict these movements. They are subtle movements but it creates a more dynamic interview. Never lock off the interview be prepared for change.
Metal and Melancholy: How do you get coverage with only one camera? Gets footage of the interior and exterior of the car, and you’ve also got to capture him. So you need to capture what’s important. Think how you’re going to make it appear that these moments are happening in real time.
Shooting too much: You need to ask yourself if you’re ever going to watch all this stuff? and if you choose to shoot a lot make sure you watch it all. Be organised label all your footage and add notes.
Ok, so today we watched an amazing student documentary that completely blew my away, made me extremely anxious and put me into Hannah MOTIVATE mode because if I could make a documentary as good as that I think I would be forever happy. Anywho I feel like I should go into some form of analysis rather than talking about how awesome the documentary is. However, lets mix it up a bit since I just did a lengthy post on Tarnation I’m thinking more of a detailed pros and cons list.
PROS:
The visual detail in terms of giving the audience metaphoric scope into the past. One of the major things with documentary is that you cannot get footage from the past if there is none, however you can re-create through visual metaphors and assistance. What I thought this documentay did extraordinarly well is capture the past. They did this in numerous ways that all worked extremely effectively. The first was the animations, or what looked liked animations that were projected on to the screen in front of us. Even though I don’t have the greatest amount of knowledge about the auschwitch I felt like I was flowing back into the past and into her memory. It gave so much breadth and scope to the story by creating another visual layer in a form of a metaphoric recreation.
Secondly, was simply the technical brilliance. The sound was amazing, the clarity of her voice that shone through all those visuals made me realised why Paul would have suggested to cut out the literal imagery of her altogether, just because her voice had such a powerful presence throughout the documentary. I was also impressed by the cinematography which captured the extreme sadness in her face and the colour which brought out every detail of her face. I don’t think the lighting or colour couldn’t have been done any better.
CONS:
To some extent and maybe this is just me I found that the documentary was overbearingly metaphorical to the point that I thought at points the visuals lost meaning, or perhaps I just didn’t get it. I’m not sure, but I felt that they were trying to fill the documentary so much with these other images that seemed at times to not juxtapose well with what she was saying and at times was overpowering as what she was saying had so much significance I just wanted to listen to her voice. It was just a bit murky, well to me anyway.
In terms of what Paul said in consideration of cutting the visuals of her out altogether I agree with him to some extent, as I felt that the ‘talking head’ of her detracted or more sat in contradiction to the overall aesthetic atmosphere of the film. The film was highly experimental in conveying things and therefore, even though the close-up shot of her face carried so much vital emotion it felt almost clunky in conjunction with the rest of the film. Also her voice was so powerful that seeing her slightly detracted from the power of her voice. However, in saying that if I hadn’t seen her I would have been extremely disappointed because I would want to know what the woman with that amazing voice looked like. Maybe, a reveal at the end would have been more fulfilling. I don’t know.
WHAT I LEARNT:
Research aesthetics until you cannot take it any longer. Have a visual aesthetic that you want to reach and have it flow through your film. Watch documentaries realise what will work and won’t work aesthetically with your film. And also relate the aesthetics to your subject matter. However, avoid filling your documentary with metaphors by all means use them as it adds another layer to your film, but don’t make it the core.
Research your subject. Look what to expect, and therefore what not to expect. Get the extreme close-up that incapsulates emotion. Listen to their voice. Is it distinct? Will their voice itself be enough to carry your documentary forward? Look for things that are already within their environment that signify something important to them and to your doco and film it. Look for everything and make sure your interview covers everything, that’s what the editing suite is for to cut out all those unwanted bits. Having too much is better than not having enough.
…and finally don’t be afraid to capture raw emotion. It adds so much depth to the finished product.
