Bad Habits (Final Doc Mode)
In making this short documentary, I wanted to see how others view their own bad habits. During finals I noticed my own tendency to give into bad habits more than usual, so I figured most college students probably did the same. At first I had an “observational” video in mind, but planning it and notifying others of the concept removed the “fly on the wall” filmmaking perspective.
In order to make the film, I asked friends of mine to come up with multiple bad habits they noticed in themselves. Even though many people share the same bad habits, I wanted to focus on my friends’ personal views regarding what they claim to be their personal bad habits. Since this film focused on their personal views, I classify it as a performative documentary.
According to Nichols, instead of a “we speak about them to us” mentality, performative documentaries have a “we speak about ourselves to you” aspect to them (205). By having the subjects narrate their thoughts, the film definitely shares that aspect of performative documentary. Another aspect of performative documentary I included was the staging and narration of scenes. “Performative documentary freely mixes expressive techniques that give density and texture to fiction with oratorical techniques for addressing social issues that neither science nor reason can resolve” (Nichols 206). While the film may be limited by the subject’s personal point of view; by understanding their thoughts regarding their bad habits, I think the viewer is able to reflect on their own bad habits.
Like Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, this film has a diary-like sense to it. Even though the scenes were staged, the narration had very little planning because I wanted to create a stream of consciousness sense to it. In her film, Agnes’ narration reflected her thoughts on delicate matters such as aging which made it a more personal experience. By having the film subjects narrate their thoughts, I wanted to create a more personal story for the audience to reflect on.
This project also reminded me of Alan Resnais’s Night and Fog. While the subject matter of my film is completely different, its structure is similar. While Night and Fog focuses on concentration camps and how they affected so many innocent people, the commentary by Jean Carol created a more personal quality. While most people tend to share similar bad habits, the personal narration allows the audience to see “what one person might experience and what it might feel like to undergo that experience” (Nichols 206).
When I think of my own bad habits like leaving my socks everywhere, I always amaze myself with how simple it is to rationalize an act. Instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to put my socks in the hamper, I just tell myself that it will get done eventually. With this project I also wanted to understand how people rationalize their own actions. By seeing these people stage their bad habits and narrate their thoughts behind them, I was hoping to better understand how people convince themselves to do something they actively recognize as a bad thing.
For example, when it comes to Jessica’s smoking, aside from the rush it gives her, I was better able to understand her reasoning to smoke. Since she can’t do it at home, college has provided her with the perfect opportunity to develop and foster one of her bad habits. Even though she realizes the negative consequences it has, she still chooses to step onto her balcony and light another swisher. Melina was able to rationalize her being unorganized with an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. To me, it is interesting to see what people do behind closed doors even if it is as innocent as being unorganized or smoking without letting your parents know. From this video I hope the audience can gain a better understanding of how the subjects rationalize their bad habits and in turn be able to see how they rationalize their own habits.
Overall, I think this film was a good example of performative documentary because it helped viewers gain a better sense of “what a certain situation or experience feels like” (Nichols 203). While the bad habits shown in the film can apply to most college-aged people, the personal narrative accompanying the staged reenactments allow us to see the subject’s thought process as well as their way of rationalizing their actions. By getting into the subject’s mindset, the viewer is hopefully able to gain a better understanding of bad habits that most people can associate with.
Revisiting Mexico (Doc Mode 3)
This summer, after eight years I was able to visit Mexico again. For two and a half weeks I was able to visit Piedras Negras and San Juan de los Lagos, two cities I had been to before and Puerto Vallarta, a city I had never experienced before. Most of the clips I used were of Puerto Vallarta because having never been there; I wanted to record as much as possible. Instead of placing the videos in chronological order, I tried to link the videos either visually or sonically. For example, the final image of my cousins riding a seesaw in a Piedras Negras plaza visually led me to place the clip of native dancers in Puerto Vallarta performing at the top of a pole. Compiled, I think the videos represent an anthropological documentary while also containing autobiographical components because they represent my experience.
According to Geertz, “Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of “construct a reading of”) a manuscript-foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior” (10). Looking back on the videos, I have been able to create my own analysis of the culture I was able to revisit. When it came to the videos of Piedras Negras and San Juan (the seesaw/wrestling and musician clips), two cities I visited a lot as a child, they reflected the associations with my childhood. My dad always took us to these Mexican wrestling matches and the plaza, and to take my younger brother and cousins is the continuation of our culture.
While clips of those two cities were more autobiographical, the clips of Puerto Vallarta were more anthropological/ethnographic. According to Barnouw, commentary in ethnographic film began to be seen as a limiting instead of a liberating factor and “with full sound, but without official guidance, filmed material seemed to offer a far greater diversity of vistas to probe and assess” (251). Without commentary on the clips, viewers are able to create their own analysis of the footage provided. From my own analysis, I also felt that commentary was not needed because most of the clips were about Puerto Vallarta, which did not require much knowledge of the language or culture. As a resort town, I realized that the city catered more to tourists instead of native inhabitants, so many of the acts were largely visual which most people could understand. Because of the large tourist culture, many of the acts like the clown show or the native dancers are put on for free and rely on tips from people appreciating their culture. Even though I had some ties to the culture through my dad’s family, I definitely felt like a tourist and was glad I was able to document my experience as well as the culture.
Pablo: A Short Scene (Doc Mode 2)
I find it awkward to be in front of the camera so for this project I chose the reflexive mode of documentary. In describing this mode, Bill Nichols says that the reflexive mode “calls attention to the assumptions and conventions that govern documentary filmmaking “(31). Trinh T. Minha’s film Surname Viet Given Name Nam made me question what documentaries present as truth and I knew I wanted to play with that idea for this doc mode activity. In Surname Viet Given Name Nam, actresses played women from previous interviews which made me want to reconstruct a form of reality that I was familiar with. My cousin’s facebook profile was recently on my newsfeed and I remember reading an article he wrote for SMU News. “A Quadriplegic Speaks” talked about his struggles and successes after becoming a quadriplegic which I found to be very uplifting. Unfortunately, Pablo died in 2012 but I still wanted to tell his story somehow.
According to Nichols, “reflexive documentaries also tackle issues posed by realism as a style” (195). By challenging the techniques associated with realism, reflexive documentaries “deconstruct the impression of unimpeded access to reality and invites us to reflect on the process by which this impression is itself conducted through editing” (196). Once the viewers become aware that they are viewing what I present to them as truth, they will hopefully gain a better understanding of how and why the film was made. Using his article, I cast Julian in the role of Pablo and staged the interview to reflect on his life.
When it comes to documentaries, I usually believe that they are inherently about some truth while other films are merely fiction. By presenting Julian as my cousin talking about his accident, the audience hopefully not only questions my film, but the authenticity of documentaries in general. Reflexive documentaries, according to Nichols should not only make the viewer question the film and how it was created, but also how the film allowed the viewer to believe the filmmaker’s presentation as truth. Hopefully I have been able to do this with my short film.
I have included a link to my cousin’s article in SMU News for any of those who are interested in learning more about his life.
Reflexive/Performative
According to Bill Nichols, “reflexive documentary sets out to readjust the assumptions and expectations of its audience, more than to add new knowledge to existing categories” (198). If this is what these certain types of films set out to accomplish, then Trinh T. Min Ha’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam is a success. While watching the film in class, it was very difficult to make sense of what I was viewing because the film had so many stylistic choices that seemed to clash, but in the end they made me focus more on what I was watching. The main thing this movie made me readjust my assumptions on was the validity of truth in documentaries. Towards the end of the film, it is revealed that the interviews that were shown, while actual accounts from Vietnamese women, were performed by “actors” who were actual immigrants in the U.S. By talking about how the interviews were conducted, Trinh reflects on the process of documentary filmmaking, but she also makes the audience reflect on what they have seem. After the reveal of the “actors” I began to question what I have understood as truth from other documentaries, which I believe is something this film set out to accomplish.
The performative mode “sets out to demonstrate how embodied knowledge provides entry into an understanding of the more general processes at work in society” (Nichols 201). In this mode, the filmmaker takes on a larger role as they include personal stories and transforms the film into their own diary in a sense. In Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, Agnes incorporates herself into the movie which allows the audience to not only gain a better understanding of the film’s subject, but also of its maker. In the film, Agnes travels around France while filming different acts of gleaming, from people picking leftover food to others taking home owner-less object from the streets. While doing this, Agnes shows how the act of gleaning has changed over time and how it has influenced others. In some scenes, she also talks about her own change over time including her aging. In one scene she talks about how she loves filming rotting things, which made me think about a shot of her aging hands and how she loved filming herself in certain scenes. By including a personal account, the performative mode allows the audience to gain a better view of the subject through the filmmaker’s eyes and how they personally relate to it.
Lavanderia
According to Introduction to Documentary, the observational mode emphasizes a direct engagement with the everyday life of subjects as observed by an unobtrusive camera (31). After viewing Grey Gardens and Sweetgrass in class, I knew I wanted my project to focus on the observational mode. I was interested in how they both made extremely different subjects entertaining to watch while only observing. When I was thinking of subjects to observe, nothing came to mind but luckily I had to laundry that day. While at the laundromat I just kept thinking of how frustrating doing laundry is. After waiting for my clothes to wash I realized that I felt relaxed because the only thing I was focused on was my clothes. It made me think about the other people there and if their time here was one of frustration or enjoyment.
Instead of taking pictures that day, I decided that I wanted to see the difference between the laundromat during the day and at night. I imagined that at night there would be less families if there were any people at all. When I visited around 11 am, I found that there were quite a few people, but they seemed to all be gathered on one side of the laundromat, leaving a lot of unused space. At first I wanted to interact with these people and mix the expository and observational modes, but I quickly realized that I was too shy to even look them in the face. I did however manage to ask an employee for permission to take photos which I was grateful for. During the day, the people seemed pretty focused on the task at hand and rarely moved around the place. The children also seemed to stay still which I found rather odd. As I took photos, I did feel uncomfortable because I could feel eyes look up at me, but no one came up to me and asked what I was taking photos for.
At night, I was surprised that there were still families washing clothes. I visited around 10:30 pm, which I thought was pretty late for being there. Even though there were less people at this time, they took advantage of the space and were spread out. I also noticed that almost every person had more things to wash than their day counterparts. Once again I could feel eyes watching me but only one person actually interacted with me. The woman who interacted with me did not even care about the photos. The only reason she came up to me was because she was selling tamales there as a side business. The children here seemed to move around more and even interacted with other strangers who were doing laundry. Since it was pretty late, I was surprised to see how easily the parents let their children move around. It made me think of the place as a safer environment for some reason.
While taking photos I was thankful that no one asked me any questions but I found it weird that no one seemed to care. If someone were taking photos of me I would ask questions but luckily these people did not and I was able to purely observe. I enjoyed the night visit more, but there seemed to be a calm/relaxed feel during both of my visits which again makes me see doing laundry as a method of relaxation instead of a necessary frustrating task. Using the observational made, I was pleased to gain a new perspective of place I once thought of as dreadful. It makes me think that if I observe other things in my life as closely as I did this, then maybe an entirely new view on things can be achieved.
I included a link to a PowerPoint that includes all of the photos you see above. The pictures here have been scaled down so if you want a more detailed look at the pictures, just click the link (hopefully it works). Lavanderia
Night and Fog
Unlike the earlier bugler films that served a political agenda, Resnais’ Night and Fog seemed to serve a social agenda and helped show the effects of war.
“Resnais made brilliant use of a simple device: frequent shifts between black-and-white archive footage of the extermination camps, and sequences in warm color filmed in the verdant surroundings of a former camp” (Barnouw 180). With the warm color footage, Resnais presents the extermination camps as tourist sites while the black-and-white footage reminds the viewer of the horrors that took place only years before. The color footage of the crematorium identifying it as a building where tourists take photos now and the archive footage of the same crematorium showing prisoners headed to their deaths showed to me how people can forget what happened there but also gives me insight into how people allow certain acts to happen without questioning them.
Also helpful in documenting the inhumanity of the Holocaust is the narration. With Jean Cayrol, an extermination camp survivor helping write the script, the commentary provided through the “voice of god” narration was hauntingly horrifying. The footage of the train and the narrator explaining how these people were transported with some dying overnight captured the inhumane acts of war well.
By including visuals of a city and the buildings of the camps, Resnais shows how the camps “functioned” as cities but also showed the reality of the camps procedures. In the film, the narrator says that people actually placed bids to build these camps which to me shows how inhumane people were at the time. By having hospitals, prisons, residential districts, and red-light districts, the camps were presented as a city but horrors still occurred. The hospital functioned as a place for doctors to perform unnecessary surgeries and experiments while the red-light district was composed of well-fed prisoners.
Aurally, the film juxtaposes the footage of these damaged prisoners with an upbeat score which seems offensive at first but it actually made me question my enjoyment of the score and focus on the horrible acts being shown. By making the viewer focus on the acts committed in the camps, the impact of the documentary is intensified and hits the viewer harder than before.
Filmmaking Styles
In watching both Nanook of the North and Night Mail, it is clear that both works are different but share great similarities. ” A Flaherty documentary had been a feature-length, close up portrait of group of people” while “the characteristic Grierson documentary dealt with impersonal social processes” (Barnouw 94). This was evident with the subjects of both documentaries. In Flaherty’s, an entire family becomes the base of the story while in Night Mail, the only subject is the post office industry. While the Inuit family can be a source of great emotion for an audience, the post office industry can also be a source of pride for the country.
Visual similarities between the films are presented in the scenes that show detail and process clearly. In Nanook of the North, the scene in which Nanook is building an igloo shows a lot of detail and focuses on the process of building. In Night Mail, the scene that to me showed great focus on detail was when a worker was showing how to correctly tie up a mail bag. The scene of the train picking up mail bags while in motion also placed emphasis on process and made gathering mail a moment of excitement and intrigue. Another visual similarity that I saw between both films involved the long distance tracking shots. Flaherty used them in his film to show Nanook and his “family” traveling far distances while Grierson used them to show the train also making its lengthy journey.
One of the major differences between the films was the use of a narrator for Night Mail which helped focus the story on the industry rather than the characters on screen. Nanook using cue cards and music to tell their story was interesting but for me, the talkies are better just because they allow me to follow without breaks.
“Grierson’s determination was ‘to bring the citizen’s eye in from the ends of the earth to the story, his own story, of what was happening under his nose…the drama of the doorstep'”(Barnouw 85). By focusing on social processes or issues, Grierson showed his audience something going on in their country versus Flaherty focusing on a past way of life of a group of people that is not representative of your country.
Both of these directors contributed to documentary by making the term documentary define completely separate styles. Flaherty defined it as a portrait of people to follow and learn form while Grierson saw it as an opportunity to explore social issues and social processes.
Nanook of the North
With Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty was able to take the methods of fiction film-making and apply “it to material not invented by a writer or director, nor performed by actors” (Barnouw 39) Before this film, most films were essentially travelogues or scenes documenting normal aspects of life.
As an explorer and prospector, Flaherty was hired to map unknown territories. On one of his expeditions his contractor suggested he take a camera to document the people and animal he was sure to encounter. Sure enough he filmed hours of footage documenting Eskimo life but during the editing process, a dropped cigarette lit the negative of his film on fire. Seeing the accident as a fortunate occurrence, Flaherty raised funds to return and film the Eskimos again, but this time from the perspective of a single family.
In wanting to present a way of life before the Eskimos made contact with the Europeans, Flaherty added to “salvage ethnography” which wanted to capture vanishing cultures on film. In order to present this perspective, many of the scenes in the film are staged causing criticisms for labeling the film a documentary.
“Part of the satisfaction lies in the fact that the audience has been permitted to be, like Flaherty himself, explorer and discoverer” (Barnouw 40). By using methods generally associated with fiction films, Flaherty was able to show many sides of Nanook’s perspective and allowed the audience to become the explorer themselves.
Another thing this film was able to do was make documentaries a financially viable option which resulted in studios wanting more to be made. Studios however wanted the time to make these films to be compressed into two years which was considerably less than the two decades behind Nanook of the North.
While criticized on the “fictions” of the scenes, the film is still by most considered to be a documentary which I would agree with. “All of Nanook of the North can be said to be one gigantic reenactment, but it retains significant documentary qualities” (Nichols 13). Through the recreation of a past Inuit lifestyle, Flaherty was able to show the world a culture that while still existing, had long been changed by contact with foreigners.
Hello world!
Welcome to your brand new blog at St. Edwards University Sites.
To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.
For assistance, visit our comprehensive support site, check out our Edublogs User Guide guide or stop by The Edublogs Forums to chat with other edubloggers.
You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.