Month: August 2014

The first point about the line between fiction and non-fiction was something I had already been contemplating earlier today and brought up with my tutor in regards to the film “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. There is much controversy surrounding whether the film is considered ‘documentary’ or if it even is based on a ‘true story’. It made me wonder where the line is between fiction and non-fiction and what is the difference that allows you to classify a film one way or another. As pointed out in the reading (and by Bill Nichols), there is a “blurred boundary” between the two. The reading also brings up the topic of reconstruction and reenactment in documentary and how this straddles the invisible line between fiction and non-fiction. The reading doesn’t particularly provide any answers regarding classifying films as fiction or non-fiction but rather explores the schools of thought that suggest such classifications in documentary. This is perhaps the biggest issue I have with documentary – if artists are able to take liberties, then what can be considered the whole, entire truth?

The reading also raises a valid point about representations of the same story or event and how choices can be deliberately made to portray something in a particular way. It uses an example of several different representations of an event and the way it is portrayed in certain films (i.e. Monster with Christina Ricci) to be self-conscious of the liberties taken and the ‘fictional’ enhancements or exaggerations or other films which claim to be pure documentary or ‘truth’. I honestly believe that the mere act of documentary making in itself is a mediation from an event or reality and that no documentary presents an objective truth because the act of film-making itself is a kind of fiction. You are constantly making choices throughout the entire process. What you choose to film. What subjects you do/don’t include. Stock footage that you deem relevant. A choice of soundtrack. The way the images and testimonies are arranged (why did you choose that order, what are you trying to say). I’m not sure if any documentary is really ‘truth’ or if one representation is more ‘real’ than the other, purely because it doesn’t openly admit that it is only ‘based’ on true events, rather than attempting to directly document them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnX5-y6V5EY

The first decision I made when coming to this task was to let the sound dictate the images and not the other way around. I wanted from the beginning to abstract the images to a point where they represent the recorded sounds which are completely unrelated. The first sound I was instantly drawn to was the electronic sounds of the photocopier and lift. This informed how I would treat all of the images I had, which were quite limited and dull (several shots of a water fountain from different angles). Due to the limitations of number of shots I had to work with, duration of shots and variation (there wasn’t much at all) I knew I had to think outside the box with visual effects (particularly use of colour grading) and go a bit wild with the editing in order to make my abstract piece engaging. I wanted to capture the ‘electronic’ quality of the sound in my images and did this in the first section by desaturating, using extremely fast cuts in a strobe-like effect and using mirrors on all of the shots. From there, my natural progression was to treat the piece similar to a music video and finding a creative commons dubstep track was the next point of call. After finding a suitable track, along with sourcing some other sounds in my peers exercises (as I was away the day we did the sound recording) the piece practically created itself. I love abstract editing tasks because it allows me to experiment with editing and in particular colour, which is what I tried to do extensively in my 1 minute film.

Imagining Reality (MacDonald & Cousins)

Pawel Pawlikowski raises a valid point about documentary making, what constitutes a ‘documentary’ as opposed to just ‘recording life’ and ‘form’ which makes me consider some of the short bits of black and white film we watched in our tutorials last week. It was a little bit hard to not consider the vignettes shown to us as a “meaningless glut of images” and this is perhaps (although they were obviously edited together in an intentional and calculated way) the documentary was lacking in ‘form’ in the traditional sense that I have come to associate with documentary. Prior to studying film, I associated documentary ‘form’ (and always have, probably habitually more than anything) with interviews or personal testimony intercut with footage. The more I study, the more I learn that documentary ‘form’ doesn’t necessarily have to adhere to a particular stock standard mould (ie. interview and then cut to footage and then to re-enactment, so on and so forth). In fact, there are documentaries that are observational in nature that have zero interview or first person testimony at all.

I also found it interesting that the reading compares the types of things we see on television (for example reality television or 60 minutes type programs) with ‘documentary’. Mass-produced programs created to push a political agenda or to pull ratings. I’d never considered these types of programs to be ‘documentary’ in the past, and as Pawlikowski suggests – if this is the way ‘documentary’ is going, then the future looks dire. I agree with Pawlikowski that documentary has stopped being an ‘art form’ and perhaps this is why I struggle to consider documentaries such as the ones we watched in our tutorial as just that. Perhaps a resurgence into the verite era of documentary making is what is needed to inject some life into the future of documentary – and maybe a fresh generation of eyes will find some stories that are truly worth documenting.

My initial thoughts when watching “End of the Line” were the connections I made in my head immediately with “Wake In Fright”. I don’t know why my brain made the associations, perhaps the imagery of the outback, but I found it interesting that when I looked through the treatment later on that there was mention to “Wake in Fright” in the soundtrack choices. I’m not sure if this meant that the creators of the documentary intentionally wanted to evoke similar feelings as the cult film (being part of the thriller genre) because reading through the treatment the only intention seems to be to evoke the landscape through the soundtrack (and probably through the sweeping shots of vast, barren plains). Either way, the comparisons were evident through more than just the choice of soundtrack. The “contemplative tone” that was desired in the treatment was definitely achieved as was the slow pace of the film that allowed for viewer reflection. I’m not sure whether I came to the conclusions they wanted me to though (or contemplated the differences in lifestyle of the subjects) or whether I just lost myself in the images and transporting myself to the environment. I did, however, feel like the documentary evoked a sense of place extraordinarily well through all the components I’ve already made reference to – a combination between the choice of landscape shots, soundtrack and editing (or pace) really captured the environment they set out to portray.

2. Documentary is something that has always appealed to me, it has always been a genre where my film-making strengths lie. This semester I want to really immerse myself into the subject (unlike I have done in previous semesters) and make a documentary that I am genuinely proud of to prove to myself how far I’ve come and the skills that I now possess. I want to create something meaningful and visually pleasing that I can happily include into my portfolio/show-reel for future work, rather than just seeing the main project as ‘mandatory uni work’ and scraping the bottom of the barrel and throwing something together just to get it done and pass. From the ideas being thrown around in my class (particularly with the specific peers I intend on working with) I know that there are some really strong concepts (including, perhaps, my own idea) that can produce some really great documentaries. If I choose to use my own idea (a burlesque documentary) I will use it as an experiment for a longer form documentary that I want to make on my own some time in the future. I think that if I approach this subject with a sense of passion and pride I will get a lot more out of it than I did film tv 1 (I don’t particularly enjoy making narrative short films, so perhaps this is why I didn’t completely immerse myself in the process last semester). I also want to improve my cinematography and camera operating skills because these are still sub-par – despite the fact that I want a career where I fulfil mainly producorial roles, I still need to have some general knowledge of how to use the equipment to give myself a competitive edge.

4. I’ve heard this radio documentary before in a previous course and actually studied it, so it was interesting to revisit it years later with a fresh set of ears. The first thing about “the idea of north” that struck me again was the woman’s accent in the opening. It immediately forces you to consider context, cultural setting and consider the director’s choice to open with her testimony. I found it hard to engage with one interview when several voices were introduced, overlapping each other and swelling around one and other. This opening – while interesting – gave me the impression that the words and testimonies were not meaningful, just noise, and while I chose and pulled out certain words to focus on here and there, it was difficult to focus on an overriding concept that these voices were sharing. When you eventually do manage to focus on one voice for a little while, it is interesting to see the different subject matter and images evoked. When the original female’s voice returns without the clutter of the overlapping male’s voices there is a very strong image evoked of the ducks on the water – I quite enjoyed being transported to this place and could clearly imagine what she was describing. It was serene and peaceful. This foregrounds the overriding narration which gives the impression of a David Attenborough style of nature documentary in a very bland, matter of fact, almost clinical Canadian accent. Once again, soundscape is evoked through foley and field recordings to give a sense of distance through the sounds of train tracks and the streets and also to elude to the theme of ‘travelling’ somewhere distant. The narration that follows this goes onto discuss the types of people who might be boarding this train to the north, and gives the documentary an abstract air.  This second narrator displaced me greatly and through his tangent about the train trip I lost all interest, despite his inquisition to the types of characters that he sees on the train and his observations. His questions of where are they going, why are they going there, who are they, did not provoke my interest as intended, but rather made me get the sense of someone fluffing on about nothing. You can tell immediately from the onset of the documentary (and once again reiterated through this testimony about the figures on the train) that it is to be an abstracted account of different people’s experiences of the North.

5. While I was not present in the tute when we did this exercise, I listened to some of my peers’ exercises in order to get a sense of what the task was. Things that struck me from certain recordings were associations with the sounds and the images they evoke, along with indexical correlations between an object’s “sound” and the object itself. For example, there were sounds that were obvious to place (like the sound of the lift announcing “level four”) and were difficult to abstract. I could instantly tell what the source of the sound was and it immediately lost its whimsical quality – it became a literal auditory representation of an object, much like foley. It was easy to see how these sound recordings could be extended to literally represented a greater picture of a certain object or place. Being that most of the recordings were done around the university I attend, I continually heard familiar sounds and found myself constantly trying to figure out what their source was and transport myself to that place. I wonder if somebody who did not attend RMIT would have the same experience, had the sounds not been so familiar to them from hearing them on a daily basis.

Other sounds, however, were far more abstracted and I found myself stop trying to ‘figure out’ what the source of the sound was, rather listen to the sound for the qualities and texture of the noise itself. For example, there was one clip which was (as I discovered later after listening to it several times)  the sound of a photocopier. The sound itself had a  highly electronic quality and was almost musical in the rhythmic repetition and cycle that certain tones and textures occurred. It is interesting to see how sound can be displaced from its original source and re-imagined or contextualised to being something completely different.