Documentaries

Blog Posts:

Untold Stories: Sound

Untold Stories: Collaborative Documentaries

Untold Stories: Exhibition

Untold Stories: Editing

Untold Stories: Feedback

Untold Stories: Assignment Reflection

This is my first documentary studio throughout the course making everything I learned about documentaries relatively new as I had no prior deep knowledge of them. Considering the nature of our topic, I learned that we’ll have to apply the strategies relevant to ‘expository’ documentaries, a style of documentary that I was aware, but did not know the term for. It is safe to say that I thought ‘expository’ documentaries are the only kind of documentaries there is. Hence, in our expository documentary, we used interviews, B-roll that complimented the subject matter well, and background music. To make it more intriguing, we also used the ‘teasers’ strategy to foreshadow the topic and setting of the documentaries.

There are plenty of pride-worthy moments in this project. For starters, our amazing group-dynamic, in the sense that we all Supported/listened to each other. We all demonstrated leadership, organizational skills while working collaboratively. Our interactions were always respectful. There was a clear awareness of the key components and finer details of the task. Finally, we displayed innovative thinking about the project with a positive attitude and completed all tasks on time, to a very high standard. I believe these factors are the main reason for the quality of our documentaries. Aside from that, we all had a great sense of aesthetics and creativity, which factored into the appealing side of our documentaries.

In terms of what could have been improved, one thing comes to mind: our relationship with some of the people we worked with. Although we tried planning everything, we realized there are some things that we have no control over i.e. people. On the technical side of things, the audio could have been better if we did not film outside, but then the message of the documentaries would have been compromised as we are talking about nature and grasslands, and they are always ‘outside’.

I believe we spent enough time and thought into our project because we planned every aspect of it very well. However, there is no amount of time that could be considered “enough”, the more time we used, the better the project would have turned out obviously. But, I do believe we gave this project our all, and it turned out very well!

Safety Checklist

Fortunately, we were on schedule and when the time came for displaying rough cuts, we had a good amount of work done editing-wise. This was a good thing because it will allow for better feedback. Due to our initial aim of creating interesting pieces, we weren’t sure whether we succeeded in that area or not, because the feedback was more negative than positive. However, we could use that to improve our project. For example, the advice of adding typography and statistics was helpful. Furthermore, decreasing the talking-head shots were useful in creating a more visual piece. And, adding more pauses to make room for reflection was crucial. Luckily, the feedback did not call for structural changes, so we were positive that we could improve the documentaries in the week to come. It’s worthy to mention that the use of feedback is regular in our group, we set deadlines for ourselves to share our work and provide comments. This way we got to make sure that the parts complement each other well, but not too well to an extent they’re using the same shots and imagery.

In terms of editing our documentary, the main concern is making the visuals appealing and engaging. Our topic happens to be very serious, dense, and scientific. To ease out these elements, we figured we would use editing techniques that would illicit emotion or at the very least – capture someone’s attention. To achieve this, we used aesthetically pleasing shots and sounds. Since the documentary is divided into three parts, we were concerned with the coherence of it all, but I discovered from the reading that ‘coherence does not mean absolute uniformity, however; pace, rhythm, and intensity must be varied and crafted according to content, action, and your chosen structure’ (Fox 2017, p.217).

I found it interesting that Hollywood did not use experimental editing until the 1960s through the influence of ‘European art cinemas and burgeoning postcolonial Third Cinema movements emerging from Latin America and extending around the globe’ (Fox 2017, p.220). According to Fox, Hollywood had a specific standard for editing such as starting a scene with a wide establishing shot (2017, p.218). I noticed that we used the aforementioned style in the first part of our documentary series. In the second documentary, we used the classic ‘cut on motion’ to create a sense of continuity and fluidity. We planned to use the avant-garde choice of jump cuts to ‘maintain the rawness of the scene’s environment and content’ (Fox 2017, p.220). Furthermore, we employed teasers before the titles of the documentaries to increase uniformity. Fox explains that the use of teasers is very dominant in documentaries, and they are often used to ‘craft viewer curiosity and suspense’ (2017, p.225).

Aside from the mentioned above, we recruited the classic expository documentary format, which involved the dominance of interviews supplemented with imagery (B-roll) to illustrate what is said. For the sake of the emotional appeal, we used soft music that was heightened at certain moments and toned down during the shots that involve talking.

References:

Fox, B 2017, Documentary Media : History, Theory, Practice, Routledge, Milton.

The most memorable exhibition I visited in Melbourne was the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. The exhibition displayed a number of beautiful paintings and artifacts from well-known artists. I learned more about famous icons such as Picasso and Frida Kahlo. These were my favorite pieces:

The exhibition was over a year ago, yet I still remember its impeccable arrangement and organization. The pieces were appropriately placed with descriptions on their side. The exhibition did not feel cramped or crowded, although it was, mainly due to the organized layout. I hope to implement a similar design to our exhibition at Melbourne’s living museum. On the other hand, I acknowledge that our exhibition will be relatively more intimate than the exhibition I attended, which is good as it allows an open communication encounter with the attendees. Moreover, our documentary emphasizes the value of community and collaboration, so it would be reasonable to aim for an encounter that extends. According to Zimmermann and De,’the environment, the guests, and the sensations that the images and sound generate all form part of an encounter with documentary practice beyond the film itself’ (2017, p.36). Furthermore, it would be great to give our insight outside the film to the audience and getting to capture their authentic thoughts of the work as ‘when documentary collaborators and community partners work together to imagine and design events as encounters, they activate the capacity to extend themes and narratives well beyond the project artifact itself’ (Zimmermann & De 2017, p.37). These encounters will hold plenty of conversation and dialogue, which would add to the works’ value and give it more depth creating ‘unexpected interpretations and insights in both the filmmaker and the audience’ (Zimmermann & De 2017, p.37). This would also help distinguish it from the exhibition at the NGV as the audience won’t be just naïve viewers (Zimmermann & De, 2017).

References:

Zimmermann, PR, & De, MH 2017, Open Space New Media Documentary : A Toolkit for Theory and Practice, Routledge, Milton

The answer to this question is very broad considering it is not specified to who collaborative documentaries are significant, so I will focus my answer on students like myself.

Prior to this studio, I never realized the extent to which collaborative documentaries are effective in creating a sense of community. In particular, the current Grasslands project we are doing. The fact that our documentary will actually help people like Alf get support and species like legless lizards from getting extinct testifies to the significance of collaborative documentaries, which explains why communities and non-governmental organizations actively seek filmmakers and the reason behind our media studios collaborating with said community organizations like Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West. It is beyond satisfying that as students we are not just communicating the problems of the community, but also we’ve become part of the solution.  Moreover, students like me get to be faced with a variety of options for producing stories and interact with diverse subjects. According to Coffman, ‘participating in authentic, collaborative experiences of gathering stories is a valuable learning opportunity’ (2009, p.76). This is due to the fact that collective and collaborative documentaries teach students ‘good listening and interviewing skills, showing them how to identify community liaisons and ….. helping them anticipate methods for community outreach’ (Coffman 2009, p.76). I can testify, from my own experience, that forming relations and building trust within all the parties in collaborative documentaries is crucial to a documentary’s success. I was privileged to learn these skills by working with the interviewees of our documentary: we had to learn about their story, make them trust us, and finally distribute their interviews. In conclusion, collaborative documentaries are significant, because they teach students real-life skills, create a sense of community and unity, and finally helping those whose stories need to be told.

When I think of sound in documentary film, I notice the great distinctions from other Hollywood films. The differences are explained easily by the fact that documentary filmmakers do not have as much control of the setting they’re filming. Whereas in Hollywood, every factor is controlled in a studio and every sound is put there intentionally. Because of that, most documentaries rely heavily on voice-over narration as it maximises control over sound quality. In fact, I’ve always associated documentaries with voice-over narration. Aside from providing clarity, voice-overs also help in making sense of the documentary. In Roger and Me (1989), the voice-over narration proved to be more than just an accessory as it was personal and more interpretive and it emphasized, by contrast, the images and sounds displayed throughout the film.

The practice of creating a sense of place made me realize the challenges of recording location sounds. The recording does not differentiate foreground and background sounds, instead, they’re all mashed together in the middle ground. We were fortunate enough in using the zoom recorders, which were able to give a sense of direction and focus through relegating other sounds to the background. However, we had to endure the embarrassment of standing close to the basketball players to capture their sounds. None of us had any specific relation to basketball or any sports for that matter, the only link we could think was High School Musical, specifically the “Get’cha head in the game”. For the sake of poetics, we decided to recite the song’s lyrics as poetry without the tune, which resulted in a hilarious outcome.