Letting Go

The Nick Dixon Sampler II- The Autobiographical Mode

This is the story of me, as told through my bedroom.  I have an odd assortment of objects, but I'm very choosy about what actually gets put in my room.  Not just any old thing makes it in.  This is the view of my bedroom from my door looking in.  Welcome to an intimate peek into my life.

This is a wide shot of my room.  It's not an optical illusion.  My ceiling is really slanted like that.  I'll go into some more of the details surrounding some of the items pictured later.

This is my sink.  I'm not particularly proud of my sink, but have found through my years of inhabiting dorms with other males that my choice in hand soaps is somewhat unorthodox.  The left two scents are "Warm Apple Cider" and "Warm Vanilla Sugar."  I use these most commonly in the evening due to their calming aromas.  And yes, I do have an extra bottle of "Warm Vanilla Sugar" beneath the sink.  The scents off to the right are "Fresh Picked Lemon" and "Fresh Picked Apples," which I use in the morning or afternoon, mostly because of their rejuvenating side effects on my olfactory bulb. Rest assured that I'm as straight as I claim to be, which is very straight.  Having the choice of what your hands smell like is just one of life's simplest pleasures.

This is my work station.  I make my living here.  I'm sort of torn about how I feel about this.  One the one hand, I know several professionals who don't have stations this nice.  It's cool to still be a student with a professional setup that I paid for myself, which also helps me bring home the bacon.  On the other hand, I'm always wondering what great things I may have accidentally sacrificed on the way to obtaining such a materialistic goal and worldly recognition.  Also, this is a terrible picture, for which I apologize.

These are my shoes.  At first glance, my room may look like a hodge-podge of random crap, but I'm actually very organised, as evidenced by my European spelling of 'organized' and shoe pouches, which stick to the door via thin hooks at the top and 3m Sticking Strips® at the bottom.  I also keep a hidden supply of Nerf® Guns, just to be safe. 

Some of my Nerf® Guns are displayed on my wall, along with other unusual items.  The poster shown is awesome and makes my morning just about every morning.  Who needs a wife when you can wake up to Snuggles?  Just kidding.  I'm still looking and currently available, perhaps for a limited time only, so ACT FAST!  The "No Smoking" sign is one of my proudest achievements.  I discovered that if you draw a line from the fumes of the cigarette to the cigarette's mouthpiece, it looks just like a piece of pie.  I rejoice in my occasional strokes of stupidity laced genius.  As another testament to my organizational habits, the hooks off to the right of the door are where I put my keys, wallet and glasses every night.  Last, that isn't a real policeman.  It's just a cardboard cut-out.  I'm not that eclectic.

In 2006, I qualified for the World Championships for the Rubik's Cube Speed Competition.  My fastest time ever is 23 seconds.  I am not as fast as I used to be, but I can still solve one in about a minute.  That's why they call me "Quick Nick."

Ok, nobody actually calls me that.

This is my bulletin board.  I write my ideas down on this whenever I get some that need developing.  I used 3m Sticking Strips® to fasten it to the wall.  I used a special kind of 3m Sticking Strips® though that have velcro® on them so I can remove the board on a whim, which is fortunate because I'm very whimsical.

As you may have noticed, I put all my movie ticket stubs on my ceiling.  I know exactly who I went to each movie with and can tell you just about all the social details surrounding each film. 

I dragged my brother to this Wes Anderson film.  He had never seen any of him films before.  He thought it was weird.  A few weeks later, he wanted to see it again.  He's seen almost every Wes Anderson film since then.  I'm proud to have helped him discover a notoriously artsy filmmaker.  This is the film that started the broadening of his horizons.

This was from just about the weirdest first date I ever went on.  My best friend wanted to see this movie together as a man date and decided hours before that he wanted to make it a double date.  So I called up a girl I knew and she graciously accepted the invitation.  I never take dates to movies, much less first dates.  She was awesome though and it stands as one of my favorite dates within the last few years.  I wouldn't be completely honest though if I didn't mention that I really blew it with her.  I made a stupid decision to date somebody else that I knew full well would end in disaster and ruined my chances with her.  If she ever reads this, I want her to know how sorry I am.

This was a difficult movie for me because I saw so much of myself in it.  At the time of its opening, I was currently undergoing some of the worst drama of my life.  My best friend of 12 years and I got into a feud over a girl.  We three don't speak anymore, even though the girl is another of my best friend's little sister.  She's getting married in December.

This movie was awful but I still have a soft spot for it in my heart.  The reason there are three stubs is because I took my two little sisters to see it when they were in town one weekend.  We laughed and laughed at the film.  It was not a comedy.  I love my sisters dearly.

This was a fun film.  I was really proud of myself on this occasion because I began dating a girl but decided I wasn't interested.  A few months later, I invited her to see this with us.  In spite of the fact that things didn't work out romantically, we were able to stay friends, which was a breath of fresh air after what I had experienced earlier on.  She's also married now.

Movie tickets aren't the only things that hold memories for me.  I surround myself with these memories to remind me of my past mistakes, as I pointed out with the previous 5 or so pictures, in an effort not to repeat those mistakes.  I also put up good memories to remind me to continue doing the things I've done right.  A few weeks ago, I parked my car in my complex' garage to find a piece of paper folded in half labeled 'Nick.'  In spite of the crude label, the note held within it one of the most sincere and heartfelt notes I've ever read.  It was anonymous and to this day, I still have no idea who wrote it.  If whoever wrote it ever reads this, know how grateful I am for your words.  A lot of my movie tickets remind me of stupid mistakes I've made, but this wall reminds me of my past successes and motivates me to continue to try my hardest.

This is my family and a collage that a friend made of my senior year in high school.  Also, I have a brainteaser-a-day calendar from the world famous organization MENSA®.  I have successfully solved 17 of these puzzles this year.  I blame the other 348 unsolved puzzles on a lack of time.  Sometimes I take stacks of sheets off at a time to make it look like I've done more. 

This wall is full of my slang flashcards.  They show me a slang word, the correct pronunciation and a definition of each.  They also include a picture and example so I know when to use the slang word.  My Nerf® Gattling Gun® is also there.  Also, I have several unfinished projects stashed here.  Off to the left is my helicopter designed to carry a DSLR.  It would seriously take about 15 minutes worth of work to finish, but it has been sitting there for weeks.  Same with my door knocker (a device designed to unlock a door if the correct secret knock is presented).  I have it working and just have to glue the components to that PVC pipe thing by the Nerf® Gattling Gun®.  Maybe after finals I'll finish them.

This concludes the Second Nick Dixon Sampler®.

The autobiographical mode is an interesting one to me for several reasons.  First off, I’ve somehow made a reputation for being a genuine person amongst my friends.  I think that I’m good at being fairly open about myself, my past triumphs and mistakes, to others.  For some reason though, this doesn’t carry over to my art very well.  I can create art just fine but have a harder time putting myself into it.  I honestly don’t know why, which is a large part of the reason that this mode held so much glamour for me.  Through studying this mode a little closer, I’ve realized why I think I have a hard time putting my unfiltered voice into my art: because it’s mine.  Because of some somewhat recent experiences in my life, I’ve become somewhat afraid of rejection.  I could handle that as a missionary just because I knew it wasn’t me they were rejecting, just something that I held dear to me (ie Christ), which is still a small but notable degree of removal from just plain me.  I could handle that.  It was still hard, but I could do it.

Art, on the other hand, is more personal.  If somebody rejects my art, I take it personally.  That’s what makes art so beautiful though.  It’s a projection of one’s soul onto a more tactile medium, whether it be canvas, music or film.  The risk involved in the autobiographical mode is not only terrifying, but also very admirable.  I’ve only recently come to realize that nobody is perfect.  I’ve held several people up on a pedestal but have come to realize that even those people have emotional baggage or that they’ve made serious errors.  The vulnerability that the autobiographical mode often portrays is in many ways an indication of the filmmaker’s strength.  Nobody likes admitting they’re weak.  I know this from experience.  But admitting one’s defeat is really the first step toward improvement, for both the artist and the audience. 

In this activity, I attempted to show myself as I really am.  Fox makes special note in his book that "at its best, the autobiographical mode not only closes the gap between photographer and subject but also the space between filmmaker and audience- brought together through a subjective familiarity and an invitation to know the "I" behind the camera."  Sometimes I’m crassly sarcastic, other times I'm annoyingly smarmy and other times I’m an emotional infant.  But whatever.  That's me.  I’m not perfect and I’m not really ashamed of that anymore.  I try to embrace the experiences that have made me who I am, yet still aspire to be better.  There’s no shame in that.  In a lot of ways, these pictures and explanations show me in some of my most naked states (not actually naked- pervs).  And that naked state is what allows for an actual message to come through.  What is that message?  I’m leaving that up to the audience.  For me though, I’m just trying to say “This is me.”  And you know what?  I feel pretty good about that.

The Autobiographical Mode

For me, this was one of the most interesting modes of documentary to learn about.  The reason it was so interesting for me was simply because of its somewhat didactic nature.  This particular mode is pretty much entirely geared toward provoking some sort of social change within a culture.  I originally anticipated that the cause of this was that the filmmaker was inherently tied to the issue in some way, as was the case with Roger and Me.  Such an emotionally charged issue for a filmmaker is bound to turn out a product that attempts to cause some sort of change or at the very least raise awareness of the subject at hand.  I definitely realized this as I was watching Roger and Me and the films by Sadie Benning (especially Sadie Benning’s pieces since the issues she addresses hit so close to home for her). 

Something that I would have liked to see more of though was this mode represented by a filmmaker who was less attached to the subject.  The reading mentions filmmakers whose personal biases remain a mystery, as with Jennie Langston’s documentary Paris Is Burning.  I personally feel that I would have an easier time swallowing a documentary like this simply because I wouldn’t feel like a message is being shoved down my throat by an eager lobbyist waiting to change my opinion to match theirs.  Langston’s own views on the issue at hand in her documentary (which happens to be sexual orientations) never once come up in her documentary, which I find to be kind of an empowering mechanism in the film.

One film that I think fits quite nicely into this mode is a film I saw at sundance last year called 5 Broken Cameras, in which a Palestinian filmmaker tells about the Israeli invasion of his home.  This piece was definitely interesting and managed to be somewhat emotionally charged yet maintain a degree of fairness toward the opposing viewpoints, which I appreciated.  Here’s the trailer for your enjoyment.

The Excursion

For this doc mode assignment , I chose to explore the world of the reflexive documentary a little more thoroughly.  I was very attracted to how self aware the reflexive mode was as I read about it and viewed the films and attempted to do this in a video piece surrounding a tradition my friends and I have. 

Nichols describes that reflexive documentaries often challenge the issues of realism, which is something I attempted to do in this piece.  I approached that, first and foremost, with the film’s subject.  No realist would ever bat an eye at such a ridiculous tradition, which  makes it a perfect subject for a reflexive documentary.  Because of the subject’s stupidity, I decided to try and not focus on it in a realist sense.  The opinions formed are presented non-linearly and in a way in which it’s obvious that the subjects were somewhat guided in their responses.  They were never prompted to say anything in specific, but they were talking about a subject they likely wouldn’t have had they not been specifically asked to.  I begin the film’s dialogue with me asking a question, which happens two other times in the course of the film.  Additionally, the subjects stumble over their words and look at the camera, revealing the apparatus of the filmmaker.

One thing I wish I had done better though is something that would have heightened the audience’s awareness that they were watching a documentary.  I included snippets of myself asking the subjects the questions as a reminder that there is indeed someone behind the camera and tried to put in just about every clip when somebody looks directly at the camera, but I perhaps could have accentuated this with a portion of the subjects acting or something.  Reality was never really exaggerated, which could have greatly helped in the telling of this story.  In fact, there are very few moments of alienation in this doc, which would have been really great in raising the audience’s awareness of the documentary’s mechanics.

While this didn’t turn out to be a perfect reflexive documentary, I do think it exhibits several reflexive traits quite well.

The Reflexive Mode

As I've been writing this blog, it has become more and more apparent to me that perhaps I have trust issues, because I seem to be extremely concerned about the pursuit of truth as presented by documentary. In a way, because of the sometimes theatrical nature of the reflexive mode, it, in a way, wakes up the viewer to a sense of healthy skepticism. The presentational nature of the reflexive mode is probably one of the best tools I’ve seen so far to make viewers participate more actively in the pursuit of truth in these documentaries.

 I first realized this when reading in Nichols, when he mentioned the documentary called “Chavez: Inside the Coup.” Nichols says that documentary filmmakers got media lies on film as police incited violence at a peaceful protest, which stood in stark contrast to what the media reported. To me, this was interesting because the news surely reported this incident in the straightforward, professional way they always do, instilling a sense of trust in their listeners. Because of the mode they told their story in, nobody seemed to question it. If, however, the news story had been portrayed like a scene on “The Office” instead, more than a few eyebrows would have been raised.

 The reflexive mode almost seems to be an invitation to filter through what is true and what is not.  I think Cane Toads did this in a few instances.  Specifically the drug addict raised my eyebrows.  In one shot, I could pretty much see his face, so his identity obviously wasn't super sensitive information, nor was the vibe I got from him an especially serious one.  It felt pretty performative to me, and I thought it was effective.  Errol Morris’ film “The Thing Blue Line”, which I viewed outside of class this week, is a terrific example of this. The juxtaposition of stories from actual players in a crooked murder case in Texas raised public awareness of the situation, which actually led to an innocent man being sent home from death row. The use of reenactments and music brings obvious drama into the situation and helps us more importantly see discrepancies in the story, motivating us to discover the truth. Truth was discovered and an innocent man was set free. Were it not for this mode, it’s possible that an innocent man could have died. To me, the use of drama is really a vehicle to draw the truth of the situation out. Inspiring.

The Participatory Mode

Something that I found so interesting about the participatory mode is what Barnouw said comparing the participatory mode with the modes previously discussed.  He said this “cinema verite” is just as truthful as other modes, but with the other modes (taking a fly on the wall approach), the truth simply wouldn’t manifest itself in situations, thus necessitating a mediator to participate with the subject and help draw the truth out.  When I first approached the participatory mode, I came to it with an expectation of encountering confrontational arguments that put one part on the spot and another party in a place which allowed him to manipulate how his subject was portrayed (ie pretty much ever Michael Moore film ever).  I was surprised to learn this wasn’t the case.

I discovered this first when watching Harlan County USA in which the filmmakers really only interfered when they knew the truth of the situation wasn’t already being presented.  For instance, the end of the movie showed a man going to work.  For probably 30-45 minute prior to this, the filmmakers almost never stepped in and were barely ever seen or noticed by the audience.  Here though, a girl simply asked a man if he was happy with their new contract or not.  This tasteful question may not have been given an answer were it not for their intervention.

For my outside-of-class examples, I have one joke example and one slightly more serious example.  First off, here’s one of my favorite participatory stories.  It’s a huge joke.  This interviewer is obviously not approaching his situation seriously and taking advantage of the on-the-spot feel of the participatory mode, but is instead the one struck with fear of the limelight instead of his subjects.

For my real example though, I decided to go with an episode of This American Life.  Pretty much any episode would do, but these journalists do a terrific job of letting the story happen as much as it can and only intervening when they feel it’s necessary to the story.

In this one, they take a particularly sensitive issue that would be really easy to get confrontational about, but are truly, honestly, simply attempting to draw the truth out of their subject, even when he's already lied to them once before.

Lights

So I brought up the idea of investigating what our eyes say about us in class.  However, as I began exploring this idea and how it could be pulled off, it occurred to me that I was going to New York this weekend and that I would be missing a great opportunity to get some cool footage and explore something else.  So instead of going with the eyes idea, I decided to stow that away until our next Doc Mode activity and instead made a piece about lights since, after all, I found myself in the city of lights this weekend.

LIGHTS

To begin, I’d say that this piece is an example of the poetic mode.  I say this for a few reasons.  There is no traditional narration or any sort of narrative device.  Anything the piece says is said through either its choice in music, its editing or its juxtaposition of images.  There’s not a person telling you or guiding you how to feel, but simply images for you to look at for your consideration and for you to form an opinion about.

There were also very even cuts to accompany the rhythm of the music, which is highly conformant to form rather than function.  Style is obviously important in this piece, maybe even more so than conveying any sort of message.

No on-set sound was used, continuity wasn’t an issue, and it was exploring a topic that was somewhat abstract.  All of these things combined make for a poetic documentary piece.

I would say that “Rain” and “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” were the two biggest influences here.  “Rain” was a big influence because it showed me how to investigate a subject without worrying about a narrative thread necessarily, but still be able to say something.  If it weren’t for “Rain”, I likely wouldn’t have had the idea to start with small lights and get bigger and bigger, eventually revealing the most impressive lights of all: other people.  Likewise, “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” taught me how enthralling footage of a city can be and that tribute can be paid just by paying attention to certain things.  New York is obviously an impressive city, and merely showing that is a commentary on its grand stature.

I felt that using the poetic mode here was the best way to both show the impressive nature of New York and also comment that as amazing as it is, people are what makes the world so amazing, not necessarily the edifices the construct.  Without saying a single word, I was able to explore these ideas possibly more deeply than I would have with commentary, making the poetic mode an ideal choice for this type of documentary.

The steez

After giving Nichols’ reading some serious thought, I feel that one thing he highlighted was sort of glossed over once you consider its true importance.  When discussing the five “departments” of documentary filmmaking, one stood out to me that seems almost more important than the rest:  Style.

Nichols spent all but two paragraphs explaining his thoughts concerning the use of style.  Essentially, he professed that style is like the wrapping a present comes delivered in.  I would argue that while he’s on the right track, the degree of importance may be slightly off.  I would argue that it’s more central than that.  I would say that style is like the marinade a steak has soaked in.  Style should be more highly integrated than a wrapping paper is.  Earlier in the chapter, Nichols talked about Aristotle’s three methods of argument, namely ethos, pathos and logos.  He then proposed that each of the five “departments” appealed to one of those in some way.  Just as a review, those five methods are invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. 

The method in which somebody conveys a story is almost as important as the story itself.  A poorly presented story is hard to watch, even if the subject matter is enthralling (unless, of course, the story is intentionally presented in a poor manner as a stylistic choice).  One group of people I’ve always appreciated for their storytelling style is Radiolab.  This is honestly the closest thing I got to viewing a documentary outside of class this week.  But this is both brilliantly researched, and brilliantly presented.  PLUS—it features Errol Morris, one of the world’s foremost documentarians and the whole segment is about the pursuit of truth, which should be central to every documentarian’s purposes.

This podcast has not only interesting subject matter, but also does a terrific job of telling it in a way that’s conducive to the story.  Its style is why I have an emotional reaction to it and why it stays embedded in my memory.

Poetry Power

Through viewing this week’s films, doing this week’s reading and viewing Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, I realized several things about the poetic mode that I hadn’t fully grasped before.  I’ll ruin the punch line right now and just tell you what I came to realize.  Basically, the poetic mode has built within it the ability to mesmerize its audience in a way that few other styles have.

I first realized this when watching Laughter, then saw it again as we watched Glass.  Pretty much every piece after that just confirmed it for me.  Basically every element allows for a spellbinding experience.  The usual lack of narration allows the viewer to be sucked in and view in the content in a way that a narrator would prevent.  Narration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does guide your audience to a degree, while the lack thereof allows for further exploration on the part of the viewer.  Their mind is free to wander in whatever direction they’d like, uninhibited.  The use of music and rhythmic editing also has the power to bring its audience in closer.  Music allows for a subtle kind of narration that at least clues the audience in to how they’re supposed to feel and the predictable rhythm of it often leaves one tapping their toes due to its catchy tune or beat.  The use of juxtaposition in editing is also particularly effective in making the viewers think.  During Berlin, I often found myself thinking why the filmmakers chose certain shots in sequence and losing myself in my own thoughts wondering this.

As I realized the power built within the medium, I found myself wondering how the filmmakers sometimes get away with being so heavy handed without us caring.  Take Glass for instance.  The piece is obviously somewhat more kind to the glass blowers than it was to the industrialized machine babysitters.  Why are we ok with this?  Generally, I think that we accept it because we’re explicitly aware of what’s going on.  In other words, I think I accepted that message because I knew I was being fed a message and it happened to be one that I agreed with.  If the music had been swapped in the piece, glorifying the machine workers and belittling the glass blowers, I think I would be much more aware of how much I didn’t agree with the message of the piece.

To prove this point, I picked something on theyoutube that I feel demonstrates this.  The first time I saw this, I didn’t really know what to think.  I remember thinking it was a really cool commercial and the sentimental value of it was obviously high.  This definitely has several elements of the poetic mode in it.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the entire thing depicted a commercialization of sentiment; a sort of manufactured love, which I wasn’t as wild about.  I’d be interested to see what conclusions you all drew concerning this poetic-esque commercial.

Week 3

Ok, so here’s the deal.  Most of what I’m going to be commenting on today has to do with the film I viewed outside of class instead of what we viewed in class.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life.  I thought it was very interesting and appreciated the effort that both the filmmakers and the subjects put forth to make this film happen.  But I couldn’t help but feel that some of the shots may have been a bit contrived.  In essence, I think the filmmakers here weren’t purely just along for the ride.  I think they likely asked for certain shots, asked people to do things over again.  While I can’t prove it, I can most definitely suggest that the use of Eisenstein-like editing and the picturesque shots, as well as the amazing luck they experienced in capturing such spur-of-the-moment subject matter may not have been as lucky as we originally believed.  That is not a bad thing though.  I’m merely saying that at times, this documentary seemed to cross into narrative territory.  Sometimes this is almost necessary in telling a coherent story so I have a hard time saying I hate the filmmakers for doing this.

On the other hand, I chose to watch Bright Leaves for my outside film this week.  I saw this the first time about two years ago when I was applying to the program.  I honestly didn’t quite know what to do with it but I knew that there was definitely something more going on than what we experienced during the first viewing.  It has since become one of my favorite documentaries and I pulled one of my favorite clips for your enjoyment.

As a side note, if you pause the video at 4:32 after you’ve seen the whole clip, you’ll witness one of the most incredible impromptu compositions I’ve ever seen.  In reference to that frame and the clip as a whole, you couldn’t write stuff this good.

Bright Leaves definitely crosses some boundaries as well but it does so in a very tasteful, inquisitive way.  McElwee’s documentary definitely qualifies to be considered part of the poetic mode if you ask me.  He uses narrative techniques pretty liberally, but he does so in a way that supports his quest to find out more about his grandfather.  Often, he’ll actually mimic parts of the film depicting his grandfather (called Bright Leaf) and edit them together with his footage.  This is undeniably contrived, but I say that without trying to employ the negative connotation of the word ‘contrived.’  He definitely had something in mind as he was filming these sequences.  In fact, Petric even asks him how he’ll edit the two together, which implies McElwee had a gameplan as he shot some of his footage.  But McElwee did something different than the filmmakers of Grass.  He obviously took his sweet time carefully selecting what he would put into his final edit.  If it were up to me, I would have trashed this interview immediately after shooting it.  But Ross kept it around, thought about its content and discovered that it actually delivered a very poignant point that taught even him something.  McElwee isn’t making a movie for us.  He’s learning just as much as we are and is allowing himself to be malleable in the filmic process, which eventually makes a documentary that says a lot more.  He came to the table with a plan but he remained healthily skeptical of it.  He was fluid in the creation of this film and his flexibility allowed his message to be different than what he probably originally intended, but also more honest and poignant.  I’m getting to almost 650 words now so I’m going long and should probably wrap this up.  I’ll just end by saying that Bright Leaves is poetry on celluloid.

That’s my schpiel this time.  Amen.

Roses Are Red...

A friend reminded me of a joke limerick I once told a few months ago.  Roses are red, violets are blue, which makes violets a really stupid name for them.  Considering that ‘blue’ and ‘them’ don’t even rhyme, it’s a pretty pathetic limerick, which I readily admit.  I think the idea behind it deserves some attention though. 

                I’d be the first one to tell you that I’m a novice to documentary.  I’m completely untrained in the watching of the films we’re viewing here and I feel like I’m at about the level of your average documentary viewer.  I think they’re wildly interesting but if a film presents itself as a documentary, I’m signing up for one thing by watching it and am kind of disappointed when I get something else.  In essence, I’m reacting to this week’s explanation of what documentary is.  Nichols said “with documentary, we expect to engage with films that engage the world.” (23)  He then talks about how documentary is edited different than fiction and that “documentary is therefore much less reliant on continuity editing to establish the credibility of the world it refers to than is fiction.”   I feel that the general consensus of documentary is that it is supposed to document things, which implies an inherent fidelity to reality.  This reading, however, was interesting in that I agreed with a lot of the ideas presented, but also felt that too much creative liberty can result in something like propaganda donning the façade of what most people consider to be documentary, which is in essence, truth. 

                Documentary seems to have a sort of charisma or charm built into the medium that makes the lay man trust what he’s seeing.  This trust should be taken very seriously, especially when we decide to make a doc ourselves.  The desire to heighten drama can be strong and I totally get that, but straight up lying seems like it’s an easy pit to fall into when you’re creating a documentary.  I have a personal vendetta against such documentaries because I saw a film in high school that supposedly “exposed” something that I believed in.  I had a really hard time trusting it again because of how inaccurately portrayed it was in the documentary.  There was plenty of truth in it, but the tone in which it was portrayed mixed with the blatant falsehoods made it anything but a documentation of the truth.

Above, I’ve listen one piece of documentary I’ve always found fascinating.  I think a part of the reason I enjoy it is simply because it’s real life and it’s impossible to debate that anything in here is contrived or that any sort of misrepresentation.  It’s just real life documented for all to see.  Nothing sketchy about it.

So I'm an idiot...

My first post, as valid as it may have been, did not apparently meet the minimum requirements for this first blog post, which was supposed to be about me.  Whoops.  In a lot of ways, I feel like this is the story of my life.

In preparation for this second attempt at a proficient blog post to satisfy the requirements of the class, I did probably the worst thing I could have done:  I watched Benjamin’s video on Damon.  Documenting my life has always been a huge struggle of mine.  The only pictures of me you’ll ever find on facebook aren’t mine—I’ve simply been tagged in them.  If you look at my journals, they’re for the most part empty.  That isn’t to say that my life is undocumented.  That would be a grave lie.  Rather, my life has been documented in slightly non-traditional methods which require an annoying degree of persistence to decipher what they say about me.  Here’s an example:

Out of the Picture

I urge you to skip the first two minutes if you decide to indulge. 

Probably not what you were expecting, was it?

So what does this say about my understanding of the documentary idea?  To me, I strongly believe that documentary is in large part layered.  I don’t know if I’ve ever viewed a single documentary and believed it wholeheartedly.  Instead, I’m a much bigger believer in subtext and in picking a piece apart.  When I watch the aforementioned piece by me (done over 5 years ago so don’t judge), I see something different than what you may have encountered.  To me, this is a piece about a boy about to go on a mission who wants desperately to be remembered even though he’ll be on the other side of the world for an extended period of time with few or limited devices of communication.  This was a major worry for me back when I made this.

In essence, I feel that every piece of art encapsulates some seed of documentary within it.  Documentary, as the reading so aptly states, is sort of an elusive term.  I feel that most art have some sort of documentation within it pertaining to the artist at that particular time.  I kind of shudder every time I watch this film.  The slow beginning, amateur VFX, shoddy acting and poor creative choices speak volumes of my inexperience, but the story also holds within it a small piece of my soul at the time I made it.  I was just downright scared of being forgotten.  I wanted pictures of me to be in everybody’s frames.  I was insecure about a lot of things, and those worries shine through.

Even films that are considered to be true documentaries say something about the artist(s) compiling them.  I have a hard time believing in truly unbiased documentary filmmaking.  Documentaries are really about people in my book.  Even something like Who Killed the Electric Car? deserves a study of the filmmakers and what their motivations were. 

Admittedly though, I’m insecure of my definition of documentary, which is why I’m taking this class.  Lack of exposure to the medium has surely given me several false notions concerning the art, but I genuinely hope to be able to explore it and help my currently malleable opinion of documentary become more resolute.

Nanook of the North- Inuit Wasn't True. (Get it?)

Through the viewing of Nanook of the North, This is Spinal Tap and the required readings for this week, several of my longstanding ideas regarding documentary were reinforced, and I was able to glean some additional ideas in the course of the last week.  Documentary seems to be like salt in the sense that one inherently knows what documentary is (sometimes) but has a difficult time describing.  This supposed inherent knowledge can, however, be sometimes tricked or made fun of with interesting results.

The first thing we watched in relation to the question of what documentary is was the 1922 film Nanook of the North.  I was quite charmed by the seemingly authentic nature of the piece in documenting the day to day life of an Inuit named Nanook and his family.  In talking with my friend Hayley about the film on a later occasion, we even talked about how cool it was to learn about the tribe and their way of life.  We truly thought it was an authentic record of the lifestyle of the Inuit people during that time.

However, once I started reading this week’s assignment, I discovered much to my chagrin that the record wasn’t as authentic as I had originally believed!  Flaherty obviously realized the narrative power and romance that the medium of film had.  He definitely did portray the Eskimos, but he portrayed them in a way that more closely matched his original thoughts concerning them rather than portraying them as they actually were.  This made me realize several things about documentary.

This experience helped me realize that a filmmaker is still involved in the creation of the piece.  This means that they will be editing things out, directing our attention to the things they believe to be important and sometimes narrating what is being exhibited.  All these things decrease the validity of the subject.  Real life is never edited, we direct our attention where we want to and narration seldom occurs in reality.  I don’t feel that I was necessarily misled in the viewing of Nanook of the North, but this experience helped me realize that I too am susceptible to being tricked.  Everything in this documentary seemed so valid to me that I never once questioned its authenticity.  Documentary is often exploited and its form employed in so-called Mockumentaries, but the audience is usually in on the joke.  When a filmmaker is showing things in a manner that is contrary to reality and audiences take the piece as truth, documentary all of a sudden can become a dangerous and manipulative tool.