Documentary Research

 Guess who's back! Only this time, I'm not some puny AICE Media Studies "AS" level student, but I have evolved and adopted the title of AICE Media Studies "A" level student, which stands for "awesome". Since around October, we've been researching and familiarizing ourselves with the genre of documentaries and even had 2 whole weeks to create on our own op-doc, so over the next few blog posts I'll be documenting the process from research and planning all the way to final product.

I think this is the closest to how the footage looked (dir. Yuval Hameiri)

I remember this being the very first documentary we viewed, and I feel like it was such an important way to start our journey of learning about documentaries like this because it completely altered the way I understood what documentaries were supposed to be. Before, when I thought about documentaries the image I had in my head was some 2 hour nature documentary or a documentary about a band in the height of their career, but this showed me documentaries can really cover any topic, yet they all similarly work to illustrate a certain "slice of life". For example, this entire piece is a visual representation of the director's grief after his mother passed, recreating the image from his head with everyday objects and rewinding a tape incessantly to express grief and longing. 

In all honesty, of all the documentaries we viewed in class, I feel this one had the most influence on my final product. It was just so stylistic and simple yet incredibly powerful and I wanted to mirror that within my own work, but more on that later. I also found it staggering how immediately after viewing this piece, we took notes on documentary forms, conventions, and techniques, and this piece essentially seemed to disregard all of them, most notably the lack of any interviews and b-roll whatsoever.

Abstract: The Art of Design

This is an episodic documentary focusing on different art forms, with each episode featuring a different subject. The purpose of Abstract is to immerse the audience into the creative minds of people who are well established within their respective art/design field and highlight their creative process. From the costume design episode we viewed in class, to the illustration episode I viewed on my own, the recurring purpose seemed to consistently be to document the subject’s creative process, both physically and mentally, and document their relationship and journey with the medium they are discussing.

The first episode we viewed collectively as a class and was centered around Ruth Carter, one of the great costume designers of our time doing most notable work in Black Panther and a number of Spike Lee films. I really liked the series as a whole's tendency to put equal emphasis on an artist's physical process and mental process, emphasizing how both are of extreme importance to any great artist. This documentary also introduced me to the beauty of staged b-roll as well as static b-roll, and how b-roll is more than just filming a subject do whatever it is they are talking about, and instead can be in the form of animated sequences, or symbolic representations of whatever it is they are talking about - something I really aimed to draw from in my own doc.

The episode I viewed on my own focused on illustrator Christoph Neimann. What most struck a chord with me was the docs use of entirely innovative and symbolic b-roll, often moreso than just typical context-providing footage of the subject. The frame above comes from a sequence where he talks about a time in his life where he felt trapped in New York and decided to move back to Berlin, with the illustrated door both fitting the lighthearted tone and serving as a symbol for his feeling of being trapped. 

This doc also really showed me the importance of having a strong subject. Christoph was the only dude talking to us about his life for a solid 40 minutes, and not once was I bored visually or story-wise. I really liked the approach of just a single interview subject because when done as well as this episode, it just felt so intimate, lighthearted, and authentic. I felt like I was literally taking a glimpse into Christoph's brain whenever he thinks about illustration and in that way this doc was almost magical and really influenced the route I ended up taking with my own.

American Promise (dir. Joe Brewster & Michelle Stephenson)

I had never in my life seen anything like this documentary beforehand. It was filmed over the course of 13 YEARS and you saw 2 children literally grow up on screen before your eyes.

This piece documents the educational journeys of 2 young NY children, Idris and Seun, who received scholarships to the Dalton School, a prestigious academy in New York. The directors of this piece are the parents of one of the main subjects, Idris, and this seemed to immediately making it clear that this documentary would be nearly impossible to make without a degree of bias involved.

From start to finish, this documentary just felt so raw, like a true "slice of life", which makes sense considering the directors' hiring of verite editors who were tasked with presenting their sons in the truest way possible.

“It was a little overwhelming so we brought in three great verité editors. We made a decision that we would cut every single piece of footage into verité scenes. We basically gave our editors a couple of instructions, that we wanted this to be a film which we as parents wanted our sons to be perceived for who they really were. We also suggested that they shouldn't protect us in doing that. I don't know about the first, but the latter they kept to.”

One scene that exemplifies how this piece achieves the verite look is when Idris talks to his parents about his college acceptance results. The raw, almost claustrophobic nature of the phone call with his dad certainly asserts that the editors made no effort to protect the image of Idris' parents. His dad calls him "lazy" and expresses how "angry" he is because he is metaphorically "in bed". In a time of emotional hardship and nearing a big change in his life, Idris' parents cut him little slack which makes the piece feel even more real, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to watch. Additionally, the emphasis on Idris through the camerawork, primarily two shots and mid shots, emphasize his isolated body language, slouched posture, and confused facial expressions to capture his negative mental state, especially in the face of being admonished by his father for his constant laziness. The raw, real nature of the phone call and focused camera work emphasize the realness and weight of this moment on Idris in this particular sequence.

This documentary showed me the power documentaries can have to elicit a variety of different responses just through using a combination of direct and indirect interviews, editing techniques, whether it be music, color grading, or simply pacing. There were times this documentary made me feel empty, or tremendously amused, or anything in between, which goes to show how far editing can go in eliciting emotional responses to any given documentary.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (dir. Banksy)

This documentary was my favorite we watched by far. The whole thing reads as a scaled down social commentary on the commodification of art and once it clicked for me while watching it blew my mind. To me, it seemed like Banksy was disguising this social commentary as a narrative about the main character Thierry Guetta and his development into renowned street artist Mr. Brainwash.

 The overwhelming majority of the doc being centered around Thierry Guetta and his journey from ecstatic involvement in the street art community, to aspiring to create a documentary, to becoming an artist himself can easily make a viewer forget that the point of view they are receiving may in reality be entirely manufactured and constructed to fit into the image that Banksy wishes to convey. Banksy is illustrated as a secondary character in comparison to the numerous amount of indirect interviews and footage gathered by Guetta, making the film, on the surface, feel like a recount of Guetta's point of view. 

One instance that particularly stood out to me is during a B-roll sequence as Guetta begins to grow more and more obsessed with Banksy's work, a video is shown detailing graffiti markings that read "Banksy is a sellout". The incorporation of this element stands for the paradoxical nature of the film's perspective. As he mocks the corruption and lack of inspiration that result from art's commodification, his own profit and fame make him an inherent part of this system. This instance clearly epitomizes the layered, beneath the surface point of view the audience is truly receiving, one complicit in exactly what it critiques, which begs the question: Can art ever really be authentic once it reaches the marketplace?

Okay I'm sure you can tell how much I enjoyed this piece by now, but in all seriousness this piece was so layered it was insane and I enjoyed it so much.

OP-DOCS

The final portion of our doc genre research included picking 2 NYT op-docs of our choosing to analyze.

Weekend Visits

I'm not sure why I did this to myself. This was not a fun watch. I mean it was phenomenal but there were so many other options and I for some reason chose to ruin my day by watching this tragic piece. Essentially, this piece follows a mother who is imprisoned for auto theft as she spends a day with her son at a visitation house in Virginia. The two watch TV, play outside together, and undergo deep conversations until the mother must make her inevitable departure back to prison. 

 Some technical elements I picked up on include the use of sound bridges between dialogue sequences  to illustrate the quick passage of time likely felt by the mother as she spends fewer than 24 hours with her very own son. Additionally, in more intimate sequences like when the subjects are watching TV together, or discussing what the mother did to end up in jail, the use of tightly framed close ups of both subjects faces emphasizes the extreme, sometimes uncomfortable intimacy as the audience is interjected into the conversation of the subjects. The holistically diegetic soundscape is juxtaposed with the grainy, dreamy effect placed on the footage which gives a sense of the surreality the mother felt when reuniting with her son and the outside world, as if their reunion is quickly fleeting and too good to be true.

Just before she must give her son back to her father, the sequence in which the son hides from them behind a chair, while humorous on the surface, also reads as a physical representation of their incapability to develop a true relationship with one another. The mother says “I don’t have a choice” as the son begs to stay, which most directly illustrates this sense of desperation in the face of powerlessness. This theme is further layered through the climactic nature of the mother being forced to say her goodbyes accompanied by her outburst into tears. The use of a bare soundscape where the only real distinguishable sound is that of her tears as well as a handheld close up shot of her distressed facial expression created an emotional reaction for me, as I felt as if I was truly faced with the gravity of her situation. Because of a foolish mistake she made years ago she is unable to develop a complete bond with her son and barely gets to watch him grow up from behind bars. She is completely powerless over watching her son grow up, and instead must sit behind bars, consumed by her regret and guilt, seemingly incapable of doing anything to truly improve their relationship.  

Oasis

This piece really resonated me, and played a huge role in helping me decide what topic I would settle on in my own doc. The documentary centers around 2 twin brothers, Raphael and Remi, and how their relationship changes over time because of several different factors. Raphael is neurodivergent and views his brother as his best friend, someone who is always there for him and has his back, while as the brothers age, Remi spends less time with Raphael and more with his other friends. However, in the summertime, the 2 brothers spend every day together, bonding, playing games, and swimming in a nearby lake. These moments of simplicity and connection offer contrast with the slow, burning realization that childhood won’t last forever, and life grows more complex over time.

 

Initially, emphasis is placed on the seemingly unbreakable relationship between the twins using diegetic sound and two shots. For example, as they row a boat in a lake together, the only sounds present are the rhythmic splashes of water and the oars, as well as the lighthearted laughter of the twins. In this particular sequence, the absence of background music immerses the audience into the purity of their relationship. However, in later parts of the summer sequence, such as when Remi helps Raphael ride a scooter, the introduction of soft, sentimental music in the background drives creates a sense of nostalgia and longing for simpler times, when all the twins had was each  other, which was more than enough. Additionally, the use of two shots vividly depicts the extent of the twins’ unity and togetherness prior to experiencing the inevitable changes of growing up.   

Having an older brother of 2 years with severe autism, I found myself heavily able to relate to many of the themes brought up in this documentary. As Remi is interviewed, he states that over time he believes Raphael will grow more autonomous and he will not have to stress so much about taking care of him. This is something I think about every day, as I’m not entirely sure of what exactly my brother’s living situation will be like in 20 years or so. His neurological disability is a far more severe condition than that which affects Raphael, so I am quite certain that he will not grow more autonomous over time and will instead continue to require assistance and surveillance. Therefore, this interview sequence, specifically alternating between the mid shot of Remi’s look of relative excitement for the future, and the mid shot of Raphael’s expression of emptiness as he stares at the wall in a separate interview, evoked a strong reaction as I wonder what the future holds for the relationship between me and my brother.