Just to preface this post quickly, our last week with Robin involved us playing around with the Sony EX cameras some more and conducting a short interview to test our technical skills a little bit more – framing, exposure, focus etc. I thought this was great preparation for our production; we can have all the ideas but if we can’t execute them properly we won’t have a final product we’re happy with. I’m feeling pretty confident about being able to use the cameras properly now, so hopefully I won’t keep any participants in my video(s) waiting around while I’m changing settings.
The main topic of this blog post, however, is documentary impact. After reading up on the Documentary as Action blog, the recent trend of impact being an important factor in documentary has piqued my interest. Caty Borum Chattoo’s article on ‘The Blackfish Effect’ was an interesting read. The different factors that are factored in when determining the impact of a film are numerous and varied, and some of them are perhaps out of the hands of the filmmakers themselves. Blackfish gained traction not just due to the quality of the documentary itself, but also huge amounts of media coverage and word of mouth. Few documentaries get to see this level of exposure.
The impact of documentaries ties in directly to this class and why I chose it. I’m not a documentary fanatic and never have been, so being able to take action is the main reason I chose the studio. Working with a not-for-profit organisation will allow me to use my skills to aid people that are helping to make change, so even if I make just a tiny impact I’ll be glad to know I’ve done something beneficial to others. As for my opinion on documentary in general and how ‘impact strategies’ are affecting the landscape of the genre – I believe more documentaries being made and funded to have an impact on society is a great thing, only if other documentaries aren’t excluded because they aren’t larger scale and have less potential to spread nationally or globally.
Chattoo, C (2016), Anatomy of “The Blackfish Effect”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caty-borum-chattoo/anatomy-of-the-blackfish-_b_9511932.html.