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.