When beginning this project, I had no idea where to begin. I wanted to addressed something I knew, something that I at least had a moderate amount of interest in. It took a long time to find that something. I almost thought that I wasn’t going to find it all until my subject matter sort of fell nicely into my lap. Actually, i stumbled upon it on my Facebook Newsfeed, and I had no idea why i hadn’t come up with the idea before. This documentary is about up and coming, or even the very present , hip hop group Magna Carda.

I knew from beginning this project that the film would be at least slightly participatory in nature simply for the fact that I am well acquainted with my subject matter. I  first met Megz Kelli my freshman year at St. Edward’s back when I lived at East Hall and she was a dorm away at Theresa. Back then, I only knew her as Megan but she was still a writer, already an artist in the making. This girl wrote a full novel by the time she was 18, she was bound to do something great with her words. By the time we reconnected again, she was already part of Magna Carda an Austin based hip-hop conglomerate, fronted by herself and Mix Master Chris Beale, better known by his stage name Dougie Do. I just call him Chris. Megan is in charge of the rhymes while Chris produces all the beats, plays the keyboard and handles things from a business perspective. Magna Carda also has other band members, including a bassist, guitarist and drummer and sometimes a singer or two. It’s when Magna Carda comes together that magic truly happens. When making this documentary I didn’t want to soley focus on my involvement with the band, or it’s members. Rather, I wanted to focus on the two most prominent members Megz and Dougie Do, and how their personal philosophies had shaped their approach to music, artistic insight and inspired their passions. While I act as a force in the documentary, asking them some tough questions, constructing certain scenes etc. I am not the driving force behind the film. I wanted to let their words and responses shape the film, and what direction it went rather than the other way around. This is a movie about Magna Carda.

I decided to draw from a variety of different documentaries and techniques that I had watched and learned about over the course of the semester. I wanted to use a combination of interviews along with music and pictures to bring the film to life.

My main purpose here was to exploit reflexivity. While I did edit the footage rather extensively I wanted the audience to be aware that they were watching a documentary, something that was made and extremely personal to me as a director. In the film Man With a Movie Camera this is done by exposing the audience to the editing and filming process itself. While I didn’t do this so much visually, I certainly reflected the aspect through the audio and the candid method of questioning.

Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley was also a large source of inspiration for my documentary. I really admired the way she used the reflexive mode to tell her story, which really added a more intimate feel to the film. This film is an autobiographical film which tells the story of Polley’s mother as well as how she herself came into being. Polley uses many different techniques in order to depict the story of her rather large and dysfunctional family. She uses a combination of home movies, clever re-enactments and interviews expertly weaved together to tell her tale. Drawing from this, I used a combination of home shot footage, photogrpahs and videos made by the band to create my film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ytq4VZ2Nyxg

I have to admit that I felt just like Polley when making the documentary. Because it was so constructed, I found myself asking my subjects to repeat questions clearer. I remember in the film when Polley would say “Dad can you say that again more like…” I used similar words with Megan who at one point even declared herself,  “Can we record that again? i started it all wrong.” There was definitely a very specific story and message that I worked to portray in my film, and I believe that Megan and Chris picked up on it immediately. I wanted to show the audience that Magna Carda is a unique hip-hop act worth checking out. Thus, I constructed my story accordingly, asking specific questions of the band members as well as using certain clips to highlight my main theme throughout the film. I also wanted to capture the different essences of the band members. I did this by using contrasting film situations and photos. I had shots of them in their home settings, which in retrospect are totally different than their stage personas. By doing this I wanted the audience to see two sides of the story, the artist at home and the artist at work. It reminded me of how Polley utilized the different perspectives of her family members to capture the entire “truth”, or at least a certain one. Similarly, I hope that the documentary I created portays a certain truth about the band, Magna Carda and it’s frontman/woman Dougie Do and Megz Kelli.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBvGbVMDYOY

I decided for my Doc. Mode 2, to create a comic chronicling my journey through the end of the semester and finals. While I am sure that my finals experience was not unique to only me, by using my own perspective, the story is slanted. It is quite possible that many students did not have an extremely stressful finals season like I did, but since I am the film maker, this participatory documentary serves to represent my own experience. Nichols states that in the participatory documentary the film-maker’s interaction with the piece is actually celebrated and even exploited a little. This adds directly to the film-makers subjective view of the subject he is interacting with. In the case of my particular documentary, though I could not render the situation completely accurate via the comic book medium, the other individuals who I would be interacting include my fellow classmates, my professors, and any innocent bystander who happen to come across me during this trying time. In other participatory documentaries, such as in the film we watched in class Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter , the audience sees director Deborah Hoffman interacting with her subject, her mother who has Alzheimer. The film is decidedly slanted to Hoffman’s point of view, showing only a minority of the mother’s own sentiments. But without the mother’s personal participation the film wouldn’t have had the same emotional effect on the audience. Another film with similar characteristics is Ross McElwee’s Photographic Memory which not only chronicles his journey to reconnect with his son, but also his own midlife crisis to rediscover himself. While this film would have still been interesting as say an observational piece about the relationship between a father and son, it takes on a different level with McElwee’s personal involvement in the movie. The audience truly is able to understand the perspectives of both men on a higher emotional level. It is the same way my comic attempts to depict my struggles during finals week.

(I realize now that I probably should have used ‘I’ instead of “Aryelle” throughout the comic, so this limits it’s effectiveness, but please imagine that I did this from the start. I hope you can feel my pain.)

Since we are allowed to choose our own topic for our final blog post, i have decided to write about one of my favorite documentaries The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield. I’ll admit, I am a sucker for movies that explore the lives of the rich and famous, simply for the fact that it is so extraordinarily different from my own lifestyle. When I began watching this film, I expected to see luxury embodied (how could you not with a title like The Queen of Versailles). It was almost too good to resist. But what started off as a film about those who reside in the lap of luxury, turned into something else entirely. Something decidedly unexpected.

The movie starts as a glimpse into the lives of David and Jacqueline Siegal, one of the richest couples in the United States. The film started off as a story of how the couple “accidentally” built the largest house in America. It is a sickly sweet story full of excess that almost makes yous sick to your stomach. You see the couples cars and glamorous lifestyle, filled with celebrity and designer clothes. But then something happened that neither the Siegal’s or director Greenfield could have expected: the economic recession of 2008. The market collapsed and the world of the Siegal’s changed forever. No longer are they able to afford their lavish lifestyle but are forced to “cut back”. Not only does this film, which at it’s start seems totally frivolous, provide an interesting perspective on how the lives of the upper-crust were affected by the recession, but also the lives of those around them.

We see the desperation of the folks who the Siegal’s have impacted. Their company is forced to lay-off thousands of employees, who at the start of the film were enthusiastic and ready for business. We see empty offices that were once filled with workers, now turned into ghost towns. The family which consists of 8 children goes from having 4 nannies to one nanny, who cares for the children out of love and receives no payment. The most interesting part of the film is how the Siegal’s have worked so hard to maintain their public appearance of wealth. We also see the deteriorating state of a marriage, which went from so-called bliss to utter annoyance. The previously sunny movie ends up quite bleak and rather tragic.

The film calls into question the nature of documentary and it’s ability to truly represent the reality of a situation. This film could be categorized into two different modes, the first being Participatory and the 2nd being Reflexive. We often hear the voice of the director asking different questions of the participants throughout the film. It is also possible that the individuals being filmed, since they are aware of the nature of the camera, are behaving differently than they would if there was no film crew around. The documentary could also be called Reflexive in that it is partially constructed. Many of the scenes depicted seem to be for the sake of the audience and film purposes. This causes the audience to call into question the truthfulness of the documentary.

The Queen of Versailles is a tale about the modern American dream and how easily it can come crumbling at your feet when least expected. This film shows that this is not a dream sacred only to the very rich, but deeply embedded in the minds and hearts of all Americans. It makes you wonder whether or not this dream is attainable any longer, or simply a memory of the past.

Either way, this film is worth a watch even if solely for entertainment purposes. Check it out on Netflix.

La Voz Alta Take 1

This piece follows aspiring artist Paula Rivera into the recording studio as she cuts a single with jazz band Voz Alta as they cut their first CD. This form of documentary uses little to no commentary, and is shot spontaneously. The creator honors the organic nature of the film in the editing process as well, using no re-enactments, interviews, music interludes or additional supplements. this documentary mode is exactly what it says, totally observational.

This is in contrast to films such as Nanook of the North which uses organized scenes, reenactments and stylized editing in order to convey Robert Flahtery’s message. Using this message allows him to construct the story to his pleasing, eliciting specific emotions from the audience by composing stylized scenes. An observational documentary is content to let the film speak for itself. In my opinion, observational documentaries are very concerned with the nature of truth, wanting to have the film stand alone.

A great example of a observational film is the movie High School (1968), which uses footage of a high school in Philadelphia. Rather than setting up scenes in order to convey the oppression that the students feel in their environment. While the filmmaker is given permission to view many different interesting interactions between the students and the faculty, none of the scenes are orchestrated specifically for the purpose of showing how rough high school is.

I decided to use a photo essay along with a recording of the session to fully encapsulate the observational mode. I didn’t edit the footage, so that the entire process seemed more raw and real. I didn’t want to show just the good parts of the recording as this would not capture the entire truth of the situation. I also included what photos I could of the scene. It took place in a small room and I couldn’t get any footage of the actual recording booth. However, I believe that the two pieces put together create a decent storyline.