Assignment 2

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Blog Post 2

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‘The successful careers of many documentary filmmakers have been built on the misfortune others’ (Nichols 2016, p.157)

This statement points to the fact that traumatic stories can be exploited for entertainment purposes – to the audience it’s a sad story that helped them feel something, but to the documentary’s ‘subject’ it is a life-changing experience. The ability to use pre-existing ideals and emotions to illicit further ideals and emotions is a dangerous tool that can create a profound impact to the society. Hence, the art of filmmaking, and, in particular, documentary must be handled within strict regulations and ethical laws. These policies would help protect both the subjects of the film and its audience (Nichols, 2017). Documentaries tend to be percieved as a portal for the truth, if not the truth itself. This requires filmmakers to use ‘accurate claims, proper syllogisms, and historical facts’ (Nichols 2016, p. 161). Our project, though scientific, handles aboriginal history and the traumatic changes to aboriginal plains. We must portray the goal of our project, which is to inform and save the lands, without sensationalising its deep history and, most importantly, with accurate historical facts that don’t degnify, magnify or distort the events happening to the plains.

Nichols, M 2016, ‘Documentary ethics: Doing the right thing’, University of California, pp. 154-163.

The practice of interviewing is not a foreign concept for me, I have done it multiple times – on air and pre-recorded. However, I, myself, was never interviewed. The prompt of the interview activity was deeply personal and this exercise taught me how an interviewee feels when they share their stories. It is not easy, you get nervous, you laugh at random moments, your sentence structure is in complete shambles. So, this helped me realise that the interviewer needs to be patient and comforting to the interviwee. I was interviewed by my friends, and I still felt uncomfortable. The layout of the questions has to be arranged in a way that makes the interviewee feel at easy and prompt him/her to say something interesting. For example, Sonja asked me “what is your fondest memory of your grandmother?” after I finished my story to make me elaborate further.

As an interviewer and director, I asked Jen to tell her story in a certain structure: the person she thought she was, the moment she realised she was someone else, then the value of the experience as a whole. I wanted her to follow the story arch: exposition, climax, and resolution. The topic of the interview wasn’t sensitive or sad, it had a more positive outlook, which made it easy to navigate and easy for her to tell too. I assume a similar style would be carried out in our final project as we will be talking with experts about something that is not too personal to them. Yet, we will still need to be particular with our questions and wording to make the topic more engaging.

What makes an essay film different is its lack of constraints on the filmmaker i.e. the filmmaker can use anything existing or not, to express him/herself. Ironically, there is no one definition for it. To me, an essayistic film doesn’t pretend to be objective as well as reflective of anything, but the filmmaker him/herself. It does not seek the truth, yet it is honest in its own special way. The concept of gleaning addressed in the first example shown did not aim to just give an objective explanation of the subject and its history, but rather it played around with pictures and footage of the act and linked it back to the filmmaker herself as she used to do glean too. Also, the film did not limit itself by talking about the subject only, it included some personal thought of the filmmaker about matters personal to her. The film did not seek an end with an objective answer, the journey of the film in its own way is the answer – it is this abstract concept that distinguishes this type of documentary. In terms of how we can use it for assignment #2, that could be challenging due to the nature of our topic – environmental activism. We aim to address the historical significance of the grasslands through the use of expert opinion. The documentary seeks to inform, motivate, and persuade, so I’m not certain that the essayistic technique is the best to go about it.

Blog 1

Blog 2

Blog 3

Blog 4

Blog 5

Assignment #1

There are multiple things that I learned through making these videos. Firstly, I discovered the museum itself and its essence. Secondly, the rich histories uncovered within its walls and boxes. Thirdly, I learned different editing techniques from my amazing groupmates, who were awefully supportive to my limited Premiere Pro experience considering my last two studios didn’t involve editing.

I think our group dynamic worked really well, because of which we were able to come up with the creative ideas that we had. Consequently, the planning that went into the production of the videos helped us use our time as efficiently as possible at the museum. I, particularly, like the general concept of our videos : “Unboxing the West” and how we divided them into three episodes; first episode introduces the museum and the idea, second episode creatively portrays a story, third episode discusses the value of the museum and The Munitions Factory. All our videos had completely different styles, yet we managed to link them somehow.

No matter how much planning went into this assignment, time was still a challenge. We didn’t have time to fully sit and edit together elaboratively, everything was rushed understandbly so. I would have liked to work more on the editing, but I was constrained by time. However, I, personally, feel that no matter how many all-nighters you pull into editing a video, there is always something that is missing or could’ve been improved in some way.

Lastly, I would like to learn more about the production process of documentaries in terms of techniques and practices. I would like more direction too. Considering this is our first assignment, I kind of feel like we were thrown into it and left to figure everything on our own. Granted self-learning is most effective, more tutes about documentary introductory techniques would be helpful.

The conduct of an interview isn’t a relatively a strange experience to myself. I have been obliged to make interviews multiple times throughout my degree and I have learned that I absolutely love it! Personally, I believe all acts of conversation are some sort of ‘interview’ even though they are not in a professional and a “controlled” environment as most interviews are known to be conducted in. Our exercise, though not masterful, succeeded in capturing random authentic moments of humanity. The question we picked was intentionally provocative – “Do you like yourself better now?” and witnessing people contemplating about how much they like themselves was an enjoyable experience; it’s these moments that made me fall in love with the art of interview.

Naturally, people were not expecting such a personal deep question because, I think, they never thought about it. Most of them didn’t fully understand it and talked about how much better they’re becoming, but no mention of actual self-love or acceptance, which led me to ask them further questions to prompt more genuine answers.

Considering the interview was conducted in the busy street of Melbourne Central and State Library, I would say the quality was good. The camera might have been a bit shaky, but that was due to the ”real-time” nature of the interviews. I, personally, think the shaky and out of focus shots preached the essence of our interview and added to its value – real life isn’t a perfect controlled environment.

When we approached these random strangers on the streets and asked them our deep question, I noticed the mechanics of power between us and them wouldn’t have been the same if placed in a professional environment e.g. radio interview. This is because our presence is not acknowledged as explained by Grindon. Another interesting point from the reading is the fact that most documentary interviews lack the sense of spontaneity and honesty, which I found to be contradictory as documentaries are considered most successful when they capture genuineness and authenticity.

Melbourne’s living museum of the west was not what I had in mind. I expected a huge museum with fancy architecture and design. However, this museum, though simple, held historic artifacts that other museums could only dream of having because the museum itself is an artifact. An artifact that didn’t present many objects as other museums do, but it carried deep within its walls the untold stories of people. It is the first and only ecomuseum in Australia with historic geology. I understood the term “ecomuseum” better when we were shown around the museum; we saw the river that once disposed of dead sheep as well as the barbeque place that was made of bluestone by the factory workers. I think what stood to me the most is the ‘lipsticks in bullets’ made by women working at the neighbouring ammunition factory. It shows the utter bizarreness of humanity and my group was keen on finding the story behind it.

However, considering the limited time we had, I suggested to my group that we do an unboxing documentary to which they agreed to. while on tour, it was mentioned that workers from nearby factories gave the museum boxes that they believed are too valuable to be thrown away, which piqued my interest. I admit I might have had an ulterior motive for suggesting the unboxing idea, which was mostly to feed my intense curiosity of the items they’re holding. Fortunately, we had time to pick a box and look at its items, and they were items that I’m certain none of us had seen before exciting us even further to commit to this idea.

-Anhar Al-Shameri