A Documentary is no different from a Narrative

*CAUTION: EXAGGERATION AHEAD*
So, today in class, Jordan brought up the fact that she almost punched someone after they accused documentaries of being narratives in disguise.
*Exaggeration end*

It was funny because I’ve had that same conversation with people about whether or not documentaries are legitimate representations of what is actually real. The Social Doc class with Laura Stein was really interesting because we often did talk about what the camera was doing to the situation and whether or not documentaries are legit.

Take Nanook of the North. The eskimos in that film had guns, but the director forced them to use spears to hunt walruses and almost killed them because he pretended not to hear that they were in trouble and needed the gun.

Take Night Train. The scenes inside the train were created and filmed on a set, you can’t even be sure if they are actual representations of what a train would be like.

Take Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. There’s a scene that was made to look as if Roger totally ignored Michael at a stockholder’s meeting. People have suspected for ages that the scene was staged for the drama of the film. Personally, I’m 100% positive it was because it has been denied for ages by Roger(he was very upset over that) and it’s Michael “I used to fudge the facts for my own agenda” Moore.

There tend to be two types of people I’ve noticed who have a weird approach to docs:
1. People who watch docs and not narratives because they only watch things they think are either rooted in reality or educational.
2. People who refuse to watch docs because they’re “fake, inaccurate, and untrustworthy/they have an agenda sometimes.”

Here are my views:
1. I view docs as pure entertainment that is rooted in reality.
2. I only really take docs that are verite more than anything to be serious/accurate. If I get a whiff of any director manipulating the scene in any way, it already throws me… which might be why I did not enjoy that Yangtze movie as much… because I sort of caught onto some manipulation early on.

However, these are just my own personal views. I think there are a 100 different ways to view docs. However, yeah, there are some people who have weird approaches to doc.

Mississippi Pork

I looked down the page and did not see that anybody really talked about this, but if they did… I probably have a different take on this.

The pig slaughter at the beginning of Mississippi Chicken was fine to have, but there were several cut points for it. The reason why we had to stay on the blood and gore and everything had nothing to do with the story in my humble opinion, but rather the compulsion of the director/filmmaker to put in something he thought would evoke emotion and uniqueness. I have many reasons for this… but one example will probably be enough.

1. Pig is shot and is dragged out with the other pigs freaking out. We know the pig was shot and seeing it getting cut on the table afterwards would have been enough info to know that it was dragged out.  However, the filmmaker decided to have the whole dragging out of the pig in there for some reason. Highly disturbing and highly unnecessary.

Missed Doc Opportunity: Missed Class

I was actually in class the other day, but nobody could see me as I had taken the form of a rolling chair in order to best document our class without the effect of the camera being involved. Unfortunately, Susanne rolled me out of the classroom, so I wasn’t there… darn.

Anyways, I probably missed a great opportunity to film more footage for my doc. I’ve actually missed several opportunities recently because I’ve been juggling the 16mm class with this one.

Basically, I should’ve documented my 16mm class group because it TOTALLY and utterly represented what I feel like I want to show with my doc in this class. It’s not over yet, but it’s winding down and I’m exhausted.

We, five people, had to film 5 1-3 minute films in the span of two weeks. It was drama-filled, tension-filled, hair raising, and was filled with moments that I wish I could go back in time and document. Of course, some stuff I’d rather forget, but yeah… it was interesting.

Anyways, if anybody wants to help out… I’m filming my 16mm film next Sunday. Free meals, copy of dvd, and it should be a good time!

If you want to be a ninja, gorilla, robot, or pirate… yeah!(Yes, I know how weird that sounds, but I’m being totally serious).

“Man on Wire” OMG, SON

Have you ever had a film where all your buddies, family members, co-workers, and pets tell you that you “HAVE TO SEE THIS?”

Man on Wire was that film for me. I randomly saw Chelsea in the editing labs and I don’t know how this came up, but she started pitching this to me saying that I had to definitely see it. Another time, I was in 16mm film and my TA, Kim Hall, mentioned it in a kind of random way when we were workshopping short narrative film scripts. Then, some other person told me about it, but I can’t remember who it was. After that, I had a dream where my beautiful puppy, Coco, started talking to me. Usually, she talks to me about baseball and how things get caught in her fur too often, but this time, she literally said:

“Joe Choe… you must see Man on Wire, it is your destiny.”

So, I checked it out from Ellen and wowzers. It is one of the best docs I have ever seen, hands down, and unlike my blog on Blue Vinyl, I can totally articulate why this one was great.

First, the characters were amazingly interesting. The interviews were somewhat talking head, but they were just so animated that it was engaging throughout. For example, the “protagonist” almost always acts out what he’s talking about in his quirky French accent.

Second, the frame through which they told the story was very concise and amazingly constructed. So, the story is about how a tightrope walker wants to do his act on top of the World Trade Center and it utilizes his journey to that point as the frame. However, they do it so that you are locked in because you want to know whether they succeed or not. In addition, they did something that I found very interesting for a doc: they jump throughout time. It’s more or less linear in story, but when they break that linearity, they always have a good reason for it, which is upping the tension or the drama of the situation.

Third, the way they managed to tell the conclusion without actual video of the event… awesome. I usually hate still photo examples and stuff like that, but this was really really good. I think the music might have added to it as well.

And finally, the conclusion, which makes you realize that this isn’t a narrative, it’s a doc. It’s so easy to get enamored with this film to the point where you almost view it as a fairytale, but the ending makes you realize that it’s not all gumdrops and kittens and puppies and posies. The ending actually kind of depressed me, but it spoke volumes about the film and added much more complexity into the subject than one would initially think.

So, yes, watch this movie. You HAVE to.

My Refined Doc

So, I’m sure that people are really confused about what I’m doing now for my doc and I told Ellen that I’ll have footage to show her on Tuesday, so… I got more specific after getting inspired.

I’m still doing the doc on a specific UT RTF student struggling to find work after graduation, but I framed it up way better. I guess you can call this a personal/narrative doc? However, I want to keep it as real as possible and I will definitely keep it a doc… I’m not pulling a winterbottom or a springtop.

My parents are immigrants, yes, shocking, I know. I have never met anybody in my extended family and I have a contentious relationship with my immediate family for several reasons. It’s very bizarre. My mother had two brothers and my father had 7 other siblings or some ridiculous number like that. I have only known one aunt and one grandmother, who is not my biological grandmother.

The only thing I know about my other cousins in America(the only members of my extended family in the states) is that for some odd reason, we all pursued artistic endeavors.

My cousins Cici is a film editor, my cousin Sarah is a actress who gave up and is moving towards becoming a doctor, and my cousin Michael apparently dropped out of USC or got kicked out for doing something bad and now resides in Las Vegas, hustling… Both my cousin Cici and my cousin Sarah have recently had babies(Kocasians. Korean-White, haha).

My parents also pursued artistic endeavors. Both went to the best music college in Korea. My dad apparently conducted at the largest music venue in South Korea. I only have brief memories of them talking about their college lives because of our strained relationships. One memory from my childhood is of my dad watching a Korean broadcast in California. It was a singer on national Korean TV and my dad apparently knew him and looked down upon him.

Despite their talents, they eventually gave up on music. Both of them. It strained us financially when I was younger because they made no money after moving to America, and they eventually took some odd jobs that almost have nothing to do with their fields.

I find their situation strikingly similar to a film graduate’s. I’ve tried my entire life not to be my parents and in the end, I worry about whether or not I’ll fail and give up like they did. I don’t want to see other hardworking filmmakers from the program eventually have their dreams crushed and give up.

I remember that when I first moved to Texas, I called out my father for making such a selfish decision that greatly affected my life as well. He replied with something that really imprinted itself on my memory: “Wherever I go, I’m unhappy.”

I don’t want my colleagues to become like that, so I wanted to do this project for that reason. Originally, I was going to stay out of the doc, but I think the backstory of my family is interesting and hopefully others will think that too.

Things I wish to accomplish:
Get my subject a job through any means necessary. Finding Tim Burton.
Find out more about my cousins and what they’re doing and who they are, if the similarities between us are true or not.
Find out how and why and when my parents gave up on their dreams. What their original objectives were. Why they moved to the U.S..

It sounds like a lot, but it’s actually framed up perfectly in my head because my cousins live in LA and Tim Burton’s Production Company(if it exists and the address I have isn’t fake) is in LA. So, going there with my subject could create a dual path sort of thing that mimic each other.  I have a gut feeling that something will connect. I’m not sure what the entire story will be, but I think it gives me more to work with.

744T Hard Disk Recorder: Not Intimidating, Please Use It Once

So, in our lab tonight, we did more of the sound lab. Chithra showed me a lot more than I knew about it before. In my previous experiences with it, I pretty much just had the settings all correct beforehand through someone else. All I ever did was change the framerate to whatever I needed(24, 30, 60, etc.), then I started to record.

I overheard some people saying that it seemed complicated and that they didn’t want to use it, but I’m begging you to at least use it once for a couple of reasons:

1. It’s really not that complicated. Trust me, most of the time you check one out, the settings are almost always there in place because most people use it for similar things. It only takes like 3 minutes to change those settings and I can post up my notes if you want.
2. Having shot things with only on-camera sound before, I can tell you for a fact that sometimes, things just go terribly wrong. Having a hard disk recorder taking sound can often save your butt as a secondary sound source.
3. Having someone concentrate totally on sound while you concentrate on the visuals is often a better way to operate. Syncing the sound in post is VERY easy as well since we’re shooting digitally. You can just bring up the waveforms on either Avid or Final Cut and then match them up with your on camera sound!(It’s really neat and simple).
4. Knowing as much as you can and having experience with as much as you can in the film world will often net you better returns in terms of being able to better communicate what you want from your crew. It might also get you a job!

So, I’m begging everyone to try it at least once. It will pay dividends in the future.

(P.S., you’ll usually boom for yourself, but it’s always funny to get a close friend to be your boom operator while all you do is mess with the dials…)

Blue Vinyl: It Gets Personal

I’m going to talk about the one aspect of Blue Vinyl that stood out the most to me: its music.

I’m going to be totally honest with my opinion and my opinion is that the music was in poor taste, poorly chosen, and took away from the film.

I feel like they were trying to make the music counterpoint to what is on screen, but it was just so goofy and lighthearted that any serious moment of the film was lessened by its inclusion. Now, don’t get me wrong, the film is obviously supposed to be lighthearted, but the way its constructed is not so simple.

You have a mixture of personal vignettes of the filmmaker, real-interviews, and very serious subject matter. The music should have been made to reflect all the different parts of the film, but instead… they stick with a Koyaanisqatsi and have their ipod on loop or something. I think there were several scenes where the music was not needed at all.

I liked the film, but the music drove me insane after a while because it got really distracting for me in a couple of scenes. I think they were trying too hard to shove the lighthearted tone they were trying to convey into my throat.

I don’t think I’m being really concise in writing this? Urr… so long story short: the music was annoying to me when it didn’t fit the scene. When it did though, it fit beautifully.

My weird rant leads to another question though: did anybody else feel like the lighthearted tone of the film made the issue less relevant? I mean, the content was so powerful, but that freaking music just made everything seem goofy, so much so that by film’s end, I honestly did not feel like I cared about the issues the film presented… as if the issue almost wasn’t real. It was a really odd sensation because I do care about issues like pollution and corrupt capitalism.

I kinda want to recut the movie, removing the music from certain scenes, just to see how it plays. I don’t know though, maybe it’s just me?

The Windmill Movie

I had eaten a hefty meal before this screening over at Wiki Wiki on 6th and Congress. I went to the theatre, excited to see what this film exactly had in store considering the intriguing preview. I found that two friends were actually interning with AFS and working the event, so I talked to them, waiting for more people to appear. During the first part where they were showing one of the subject’s films, I had to use the restroom, so I went and used it. I came back and watched the rest of the movie. My life is so pretentious and dull.

The Windmill Movie felt a lot like what I wrote above except imagine it being better and more interesting. I guess what I’m going to write about regarding this doc is the fact that I enjoyed it, but have no idea why.

I have no idea what the message of the film was. I am not too sure what the story actually was. All in all, it felt more like a biography than anything else, and I’m fine with that. For those of you who don’t know, the concept behind the film is that a filmmaker was documenting his life, unable to make a good film out of it, when he suddenly passed away. Taking up his “mantle,” a former student uses his footage to create a sort of homage to him.

The story is not about trying to find the meaning of the filmmaker’s film nor is it about his student’s quest in trying to piece it together(although it does start out that way), it is more about examining the man’s life through his work and leanring about him through this final unfinished film. At least, I think that’s what the story is about.

To be honest though, I think the only reason I liked it is because I love learning about people so I’m inclined to like pieces like this. The man was an intriguing fellow. He was bald, dumpy, kinda ugly, and really cynical, but he somehow attracted people and wooed many ladies. He’s kinda like Captain Jack Sparrow except instead of that bad boy pirate charm, he has… emo, masochist, voyeuristic tendencies.

I think I hated this fellow, but I liked the film? I have no idea how to explain it. Although, I will say one thing. I honestly believe that the film professor acted differently in front of the camera than he would in real life. I mean, that’s a given considering the camera’s effect on people, but he as a filmmaker totally acted for the camera in my opinion. However, I wonder if that’s a bad thing or not because through that, I learned more about him than if he had shoved his journal down my throat.

He saved his niece from a flying umbrella cinderblock, losing his toe in the process, but instead of being humble about it or sad,he documents it by showing off his missing appendage. He shows it at the beach, at the table, after the bandages come off and you never learn anything about why he’s doing so except that he’s kind of cocky? Yup, I think I hate this guy.

…Do I?

“Luke” and “Waltz with Bashear”, What is a Documentary?

So, all the film students in the class probably know this, but we have a good variety of students in the class, so I thought this would be interesting to write about. Word! Haha.

At UT’s film school, we are required to take a class called RTF317, Narrative Strategies. I had a wonderful person teach mine by the name of Kristen Warner and I recall vividly one of the most heated and confusing discussions we had as a class regarding the nature of Docs and what exactly constitutes one.

Pretty much, Kristen was saying that anything could be a doc. We had just seen The Watermelon Woman(I believe this was the title), and there was this huge debate about whether or not a totally constructed doc was still a doc. For people who haven’t seen the film(which I hope is all of you, that ish was terrible), the film purports to be a doc and then reveals at the end that it isn’t one at all, that all of the events were acted out/scripted. Since a lot of us had worked on films by that point, a good majority of the film students had recognized that fact far before the credits rolled. The issue regarding how to see the film dealt with the fact that it was sort of born out of reality, but embellished the crap out of. She added a sex scene in the film, with herself in it… and it was cut cinematically. She also used actors I believe.

Quote from the discussion in the class on whether or not it was indeed a doc:
“Wait, so are you telling us that I can make Transformers and tell everyone that it’s a doc, and it’ll be a doc?”(Kristen had just made the argument that if you say a film is a doc, that’s the only way to know if it’s a doc or not).

Personally, I didn’t consider the 317 film a doc because of the fact that there was a screenplay and it was 100% controlled. However, the question of what a doc actually is, is not all too clear. After all, what keeps something like Titanic from being considered an actual documentation of what happened when that big ass ship sank? For most people, we want to associate documentaries with a trustworthy portrayal of reality. However, docs tend to be much more varied than that. In Social Doc, we used a definition similar to:

“A documentary is a constructed representation of actuality.”

This definition is very broad and is probably the best way to describe docs. It’s not the best way to argue that Titanic isn’t a doc though because pieces of that movie were actually constructed representations of what actually occurred. In addition, Night Train, a straight doc, used a totally fake scene that was shot on a set to look like the inside of a train. So, when a doc uses a narrative scene and when a narrative uses constructed representations of actuality, who’s to say what is or what isn’t a documentary?

Before I go off on a huge rant(stupid Joe, you already did that, LOOK AT THE ABOVE), the reason I wanted to bring up this question was because of a discussion we had in lab about documentary characteristics and how some people felt that Waltz was not a true doc because of its animation and the fact that it wasn’t covering the two sides of the massacre.

For me, that wasn’t an issue. I felt fine with the director choosing not to cover both sides because he wasn’t documenting the massacre, he was documenting his journey to recover his memories and how Israeli forces unwittingly created another auschwitz/holocaust.

I was also fine with the animation because the conversations were most likely taken in a doc format(other than the two which prompted the director’s idea) and it was not at all different from the father and son piece we watched in class. It was just swapping out archival footage for animation.

I assume that the process for this doc was the following:
A) Recording sound/conversations/studio interviews
B) Editing
C) Storyboarding for animatio, Animating to the sound
D) Editing with animation+sound+music

whereas a normal doc would be:
A)gathering your footage
B) Editing

So, pretty much the same except with an added step and an extra editing step. Still definitely a doc.

Oh, by the way, speaking of not covering both sides in Waltz, I had massive issues with Luke. Everyone in our class seemed to like it, but I disliked it. I think that it was well made, but that was definitely a film that needed to address more of the subject because I feel it was ignoring things to further its argument(which a lot of docs do, but not so obviously).

These are what I had problems with:

1. I had the lingering question in my mind about why he was in jail. It was never really addressed. What did he do that got him in so much trouble? I know it involved drugs, but in what way? Because this was never addressed, I immediately assumed that the creator of the doc left it out to make the audience feel more sympathetic to Luke.
2. The mother says something really irresponsible during the film that wasn’t addressed. She said that her son decided that if his prescribed meds weren’t working, he’d look for his own drugs to help himself. I highly doubt that his mindset was fully understood by his mother… and the film never really tries to explain how drugs that can get him into trouble with the law would actually help him. Also, no offense, I could totally be generalizing this, but based on how he looked when he was older, he does seem like the type of person who would sell drugs/take them. The statement that he was using them to help himself felt hollow and felt like the mother was making an excuse for her son(something she is entitled to do, but not something the filmmaker is entitled to do). I don’t dispute the fact that Austin police killed this guy by not getting him the proper facilities or medical attention, but I don’t think excluding the complexities of his moral character helped this film(if that is what indeed happened). I really wish I knew more about him because honestly, I would have related to him more if he was just a young kid getting into trouble who had a mental disorder that was never addressed by authorities. Instead, it feels like the doc was insinuating that he was a perfect boy whose illness was the cause of all of his issues.  Perfect victims destroy my suspension of disbelief and I really wish I could like this film because it was really well done.

I want like 20 comments on this post because it’s 5 am now, I’m really tired and reading this back, I realize I wrote some stuff that is highly debatable… so… DEBATE!(Call me names! We’ll reenact the hot dog stand doc! haha)