Film/TV2: Analysis/Reflection 4: Q4

Select from one of the readings and briefly describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that interest you, something you could apply to your own documentary.

“They were to be flies on the wall.”

It intrigues me, observational cinema. Watching “A distant gaze” further reassures that statement. It never occurred to me to approach a documentary in an observational way, maybe it is because I am so accustomed to the conventional ways of documentary making. Anything, and everything has to be narrative-driven. Come to think of it, it would be interesting to infuse observational principles our existing documentary format, and for once, allow the stories to tell themselves.

We filmed a segment of our documentary in a warehouse, with large potential of ambient sounds to intrude the voice and space of our interviewee. There were numerous cuts in between a conversation while filming due to planes and helicopters passing through, and constant car honking. We wouldn’t want to strain our viewers too much as to decipher the spoken words of our interviewees, therefore we had to place our sound person as close as possible to them, and to notify us of any substantial noise intrusions.  This is not to compromise the communicative intent of our film.

Ruoff, Jeffrey. Conventions of sound in documentary. In Cinema Journal,  vol. 32, no. 3, 1993.