Documentary

During the seminar we established roles for the documentary, i am the director for the project, i feel that this will be a challenging role for me as i usually like to be the editor, but it fits well with my other module as i am doing creative project realisation, so i will be using my creative directing skills in both modules, which i feel will strengthen my confidence and assertiveness this semester. I am looking forward to. In our first meeting with the module leader we found that another group in a previous year had done a similar documentary on castle market. We discussed whether we still wanted to do the documentary and we decided that because of the timing of the market shutting down and the opening of the new market being within our time frame we would like to give the project a go regardless.  

Documentary planning

For our documentary project we are making a 5- 10 minute poetic documentary, as a group in our first meeting we talked about different themes that we wanted to explore, we first cancelled out themes that didn't appeal to us, we wanted to steer clear of mental health as we thought it would be too difficult ethically and because of our age we didn't think we would be able to get the interviews necessary to do the subject any justice. We originally wanted to steer clear of any subject that was quintessentially Sheffield, but the Sheffield market that has been standing for over 100 years is closing down, and reopening on the moor, and the dates in which the change over happens are within the time frame for the documentary, so we can capture the decline of the original market as for many years now it has been considered a bit of an eyesore in Sheffield. The opening of the new one. I think what attracted us to this idea most is that there is a vast amount of resources available to us about the market, it gives us a lot of scope to have our own creative stamp on the piece and we will hopefully have a wide range of filmic texts at our disposal, such as archive footage, newspaper articles, interviews with the various stall owners and customers to the markets. there is also a wide range of sounds available to use for the piece. And because of the timing between old and new market we will be able to create a rhythm and flow that resonates with the context.

Documentary reading and films

Poetic Documentary 

For my semester one documentary module, i will be making a 5 to 10 minute poetic documentary, in our classes we have been looking at various styles and techniques that would make a documentary poetic.

 Firsly we looked at different movements of poetic documentary over the years, the British movement was headed by John Grearson, he believed in creative interpretation of actual reality, and was marxist in his belief of "community over the individual" He enlisted many other film makers into the GPO film unit, including Basil Wright, Harry Watt and their 1936 film Night Mail.

Night Mail was an educational documentary, it was extremely stylistic and would not be considered a conventional documentary by today's standards. But for its time it was an educational film about the UK's postal service, it used actors and followed a scripted narrative, that was supposed to represent a typical night for the workers. 

A poem was written for the film by W.H. Auden and was used towards the end of the film, the film is poetic because the use of images and editing matches the speed and rhythm of the poem, the score was written for the film and the creator Benjamin Britton, emulated the natural speed of a train with the slow crescendo then the repetitive rhythm of the train on the track. The sound and the image work to evoke the movement of the train and because of this its a very interesting example of early documentary.

A second movement we looked at was direct cinema/ observational cinema, this was a cinema that was highly codified, interested in trying to stay true to the documentary genre, it was opposed to interviews and was focused on trying to get the subject to forget the camera crew to gain a more realistic performance from the subject.  

A notable director of this movement was D.A. Pennebaker, he filmed 'Dont look back' in 1967

The film followed Bob Dylan on his tour, the non invasive style of documentary film making allows the audience to see Bob Dylan at the height of his fame as himself, i think because of the nature of the documentary style it calls into question whether Bob Dylan is playing up to the camera or not, as there is no interviews, apart from the press interviews that he has to seemingly endure. My own personal opinion is that this film does in fact represent the star quite fairly, as at the time as i mentioned he was at the height of his fame and probably ego, and i think this documentary interestingly shows rather than the true nature of the star, his reaction to fame. In some of his interviews he seems to waffle on a bit with no real point, making himself sound a bit arrogant and young. The most obvious poetic aspect of the documentary comes at the beginning, it is described as the first music video, and it shows Dylan holding placards featuring lyrics from his song subterranean homesick blues. Using image and sound that are aware of each other has become symbolic of poetic documentary. The use of lightweight cameras enabled the direct cinema auteurs to interact with the audience to produce a more fly on the wall and in the moment feel, something extremely new and progressive for its time.

Contemporary Cinema

Wisconsin death trip is a contemporary documentary that is based on a book of photographs from 19th century Wisconsin. The director James Marsh collected notes from the nearby mental asylum and formed some main characters from the photographs and notes. He uses a range of techniques including black and white, re-enactment and still photographs. The narration consists of the mental asylum notes and exerts from a local paper from the time. The film for me was interesting and possessed a dark comedy which worked really well with the content, but i felt it lacked a rhythm and speed and it seemed to drag on a little bit. I liked the use of re-enactment especially for Mary the 'window smasher'. I felt that the use of colour within the film against the black and white seemed to ruin the 19th century setting, as it was quite confusing as you associate black and white with the past and when the modern colour shots appeared you almost felt like he was talking about a different era entirely. On the whole i think techniques i would like to use in my own poetic documentary include the use of still photographs. The cinematography in the film was nice, the scene where Mary the 'window smasher' is flipping her hair in the doorway seemed to show her isolation as the narration highlights that she doesn't know why she smashes windows but a mania seizes her. 

'Waltz with Bashir' is an animated documentary made in 2008 by Ari Folman, and it depicts his experiences in the Lebanon war. The Narrator tries to reconstruct some of his missing memories surrounding the massacre in Lebanon. The film is completely animated apart from the last two shots in the film, which show real footage of when the soldiers find the bodies in one of the camps in Lebanon. I thought the use of animation was extremely effective in this film as it allowed Folman to reconstruct a flashback that he is experiencing (the image on the poster above) that he would have had great difficulty directing in real footage. The use of animation allows him full creative control over the images and as he is the subject of the documentary it allows him to show the viewer what is in his minds eye. During the documentary it becomes apparent that during interviews and afterwards he is drawing pictures of the scenery and the subject, which i think is interesting as all of the animation is done subjectively from his point of view, which makes the documentary like a portrait documentary but with a historical backdrop. The animation and the flashback sequence that reoccurs makes the documentary poetic, and this technique works so well with the content but unfortunately i don't think using this technique is possible for our own documentary as the time frame is too small but i would be interested in bearing this in mind for any future projects.

'Project Nim' is James Marshes 2011 film centering around Nim, a chimpanzee that was the subject of a scientific study from his birth, he was raised in a family of humans and taught sign language in an effort to see if another species could communicate with us on a human level. The documentary interviews some of his various carers in chronological order, it consists of found footage of Nim of which there is a vast amount and interviews with the people who knew Nim or had significant involvement in his life, doing it in such a way that it becomes apparent that all of the carers had a very different role to play during the course of Nim's life. The documentary does not attempt to humanize Nim, it tries to document Nim's life in order and takes the audience through what he may have experienced but a natural sympathy for his emotions occurs while watching the film without the film maker having to. But intentionally or unintentionally it shows the personalities of those who cared for him, in many ways it ceases to be a film about a chimpanzee but a documentary about the radical science of the 70's and the Hippie culture that surrounded it, it raises many ethical issues such as the chimp smoking a joint in some of the photographs, and during interviews with some of the participants it becomes apparent that they are eccentric and this makes for a better story. In regards to technical film making its not very ambitious but the structure is clever as the story appears unbiased but Marsh has created a film that begs the audiences own biases of the 70's and causes them to judge the characters portrayed. I enjoyed the film but i felt it lacked the momentum and by the end of the film i felt sympathy for Nim but had lost interest in the narrative.