This week the clip we watched in class that really stood out to me was the one titled ‘Documenteur’, which I thought was a really interesting almost sort of ‘people-watching’ film (if that term makes sense). The clip essentially features this sort of disconnected monologue which describes both the external appearance of certain things and in particular facial expressions (at the beginning of the clip anyway) as well as what one could presume is a characters internal machinations. Despite the way the voiceover progresses through this very poetic sort of sequence, it was actually the very opening shot which intrigued me the most. This sort of idea of filming a person’s facial expression and giving it an accompanying voiceover of what might be going on in their head is one that I’d actually really like to see explored further. In this case I don’t think this is something I would experiment with personally, but I think it’d be really interesting to see someone else in the class take an idea like this and run with it for their final assignment. Of course showing an image of someone’s face while an monologuing voiceover explains what they’re thinking at the time, is a bit of a trope in the cinema world, I think approaching it from an external perspective – in that it could be an outside observer making up what that person’s story or thoughts could be based on their outward appearance, could be a really interesting short film to watch and it would certainly be within the spirit of this class. It’s rather surprising to me actually that there doesn’t seem to be anyone doing any ‘people watching’ for their observations (at least judging by the shared observations), considering just how rich a topic it could be for exploration – though I do think this could in large part be attributed to the lockdown. I’d almost be interested to see what comes out of this class the next time it’s run (presuming that happens post-COVID), just to see how much more actual people factor into the class’s observations. For me personally I think even if there were loads of people out and about I probably wouldn’t be writing about them – there’s just something that feels a little off putting about that whole idea, even more so than say street photography for instance. But nonetheless that doesn’t stop me thinking about the filmic potential of it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13Hznnz-tSyMR4u3s63Yrl6rFiX1LVQZ1/view?usp=sharing