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.