For this activity, I watched Heart of A Dog (2015, Dir. Anderson, L), which consists of a voiceover narration by the filmmaker herself accompanied mostly by archived videos and photos. The documentary starts with an animation of sketches, and throughout the whole thing, several texts will appear on-screen. It also includes various background music suited to the narration and the scene being displayed. Occasionally, some sound effects could be heard in order to emphasise something in particular.
Since the majority of the documentary was edited in such a way that it has a “dark” theme by the use of black and white footage, accompanied by an eerie background music and/or sound effects, it surely made me feel exactly that, and honestly, it wasn’t something I expected at first. In contrast, there were also some shots that had colour, and a light and easy music was playing in the background, lifting the mood up a little amidst all the jam-packed darkness throughout the documentary. From all that, I was made more aware that a single footage can create a different effect depending on how it was edited.
In some parts, the scene being shown on-screen does not necessarily have any relevance to the narration, and these shots on their own could be quite boring to watch. However, since there’s usually the narration in the background, it tricks the mind to rather focus on what’s being said instead of what appears in front of the eyes. The type of language being used also evokes a similar emotion as to what the narrator might be feeling.
Just like Heart of A Dog, my documentary, SBP for Humanity, will also revolve around a voiceover narration by one of the people who understands and is involved in the project itself. Heart of A Dog also uses more than one background music, and the changes between each one were made so subtle that they were hardly noticeable. Since my documentary will also feature different scenes that will portray different emotions, I will also be implementing that technique to the best of my abilities. On a similar note, I noticed that Heart of A Dog has instances where the audio can either only be heard through the left earpiece, or it travels from the left to the right. This makes me want to try and experiment with it as well in my documentary.
