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.)