This week we were introduced the concept of contemplation in documentary through the film of Our Daily Bread (2005) and Thirteen Lakes (2004). For those two films, they used the most of long and steady shots to record the actions or environments, in this way to keep the slow pace of the film. Moreover there were no voiceover and captions but only the original sound of the environments and actions, thus the films were seen to be more natural and pure. However this intuitive way of presenting the environment allows the audience to immerse themselves in the environment and focus more on their reflection to it. Indeed, after watching Thirteen Lakes (2004) I felt calm and peace through those natural lake images and their slowness, I also reflected on whether human activities would break its calm, such as the global warming would cause the lake to dry up in the future and what can human do to avoid this thing happen.
For my own work this week I imitated the Our Daily Bread and Thirteen Lakes’ shooting way of recording actions in using long and steady shots to keep the slow pace, and also not using any voiceover and captions in my short film. There were mainly my actions in the film, which were how I wasted food, tissues and plastics etc. daily. The idea of this short film was inspired by the contemplate documentary of Modern life which introduced in Hughes (2014)’s Green Documentary. According to Hughes (2014), the film records how the more cosmopolitan population brings the different kind of life to the ancient hills and to reflect the past and future. Thus I tried to record some actions in daily life about wasting to remind audience, consider and interconnect their emotions about the environment — what are the consequences of these actions on the environment or what can I do to protect environment.
In addition, to reflect my work I think I can film some landscapes which directly represent the environment, though the long and patient filming process would be a challenge for me. And I think it’s necessary for me to keep on observing the environment around me and keep thinking, in this way I hope I can have some unique angles to reflect upon the environment. Moreover I found an interest in the ‘irony’ way of making a documentary which introduced in Green Documentary (Hughes, 2014), it’s such a new concept to me which I think it can bring special emotions to audience (like guilty or anger), I think I could explore more on this part in the future.
Bibliography:
13 lakes. 2004. [film] Directed by J. Benning.
Our Daily Bread. 2005. [film] Directed by N. Geyrhalter abstains.
Hughes, H. (2014). Green documentary : Environmental documentary in the 21st century. Bristol: Intellect.