Final Project: Final Intermission

As my last project for this class approached I knew I wanted to create a short documentary. I have never created one before, and as I contemplated what to create I remembered that my sister in eighth grade was practicing for her upcoming musical, Aladdin. I knew that this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to film and document, so I decided to create Final Intermission.

The film takes place in Houston, Texas at Trinity Lutheran Church and School. I used to attend this institute and I knew that my sister Catherine is about to graduate from there this year. The school has been hosting a spring musical for the past 10 years under the direction of Mrs. Cheryl Mangles and her husband Jason Mangles. I asked permission from them to follow Catherine around behind the scenes since other minors would be in the documentary. Thankfully, they were thrilled that I was taking this opportunity to showcase the hard work and dedication that goes on behind the scenes of a two hour musical.

In planning my approach to this documentary I reflected back on what kind of documentary films that had stuck out in my memory. I realized that the films that gave me the strongest impression were in the style of the anthropological mode. I wanted to emulate films with good storytelling such as N!ai: Story of a !Kung Woman, in which characters develop and the plot is linear.

However, I did not want to film myself interacting with other subjects. There are of course instances in Final Intermission where I interact with Catherine, but since she is my sister I would sometimes have to express myself to her so I could get an understanding of what I was experiencing. I tried to use Bill Nichols basic definition of the observational mode to create the style of Final Intermission, which is creating a film in which the filmmaker “looks on as social actors go about their lives as if the camera were not present” (Nichols 150). I originally chose this mode because I thought that it would best fit with the environment I was going to film in. I knew that if I wanted to film for both weekends leading up to the musical that I needed to keep out of the way as much as possible and not be a distraction for the actors. This meant that I could not interview any students or adults involved, as they were all busy and had a tight schedule.

The anthropological mode is further developed in the relationship that is created with the main subject, Catherine. It is apparent that she is aware of the camera following her, but she interacts with it as if it is another person next to her, meaning that she acknowledges me as a filmmaker within her environment. In creating a “record” of the experience that we shared over two weekends, I entered the world of her acting career and social life (Nichols157). Her friends would sometimes acknowledge the camera, but I would not engage back with them through interviews or subplots. This reason was due in part to my ethics of creating this film. I knew that I was not going to send this video out for everyone to see, but I wanted to make sure that the privacy of students involved was put in as little risk as possible.

In an unusual take on modern documentaries, I decided not to do voiceovers in the film. This was in homage to the film Surname Viet Given Name Nam, in which a lot of text was displayed over filmed images and scenes. I chose this method so that the audience would understand what was happening in the film and be able to follow along with the plot of Final Intermission. This documentary is not purely observational, as most films are actually a combination of different modes. My mode in this film is anthropologic because I entered into a world that I was not a part of. I had never been to a rehearsal or read Catherine’s script before this project, so I followed her around to better understand the culture and efforts that produce musicals. The theater is a unique setting in which people are constantly trying to hide their true identity onstage. I wanted to document Catherine’s transformation in this, as an anthropology documentary follows a “informant to provide access to the culture studied” (Nichols 152). I think Catherine did an excellent job at showing all aspects of behind the scenes work, and that this carried over into Final Intermission.

I learned from this project that the mode does not merely show up in the end result of the project, but that it must be a part of the film from its creative idea to its final form. The anthropological mode was the best one to take in this case because it allowed me to document events that only some are privileged to see in a manner that allowed me to keep as true to actual events as possible. I named this film Final Intermission because I know that my sister wants to continue doing spring musicals in high school. However, as she has done musicals for the past four years, she will only have four more years to perform. This year marks her “intermission” between her middle school and high school musical career, and I wanted to create a film that reflected her passion and hard work for the stage.

Works Cited
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2010., 2010. ST EDWARDS UNIV’s Catalog. Web. 8 May 2014.

Compare and Contrast the Reflexive and Performative modes of documentary. Use specific examples from the film we watched in class to support your ideas.

The Reflexive and Performative modes of documentary both have memorable films that we watched in class. The modes were a bit hard to distinguish at first because they were both very unique ways that a filmmaker could convey their message to the audience. However, after watching the Performative documentaries, the Reflexive mode became  clearer.

The Reflexive mode focuses the audience’s attention on how a documentary film is made, by showing how a scene is filmed and through possible discussions done by the director. The Performative mode can also bring attention to this film making process. However, the main distinction is how the director interacts with the film (Nichols 151-152). In the Reflexive modes, the filmmaker is heard talking about the process or letting the camera film unusual shots. The Performative mode will show the filmmaker interacting with subjects, walking around during the fieldwork, and even filming themselves as they go through the process of planning their scenes.

The Reflexive mode explores how certain documentary methodologies, such as interviews and fieldwork, can be presented in ways that break conventional means. In the film Sur Name Viet Given Name Nam, the interviews stand out as being unconventionally filmed, almost to the point where the audience loses focuses on what the subject is saying. The camera may start off being focused on the subject, but will often drift off of the face.

It is a method that calls attention to the act of interviewing because it makes the audience reflect on what expectations they had for how an interview should be done. There is not a rule for documentaries that states a camera must remain focused on a subject’s face, but it is expected nonetheless by the audience. The Performative mode can be a bit more conventional in this sense, as seen in the film The Gleaners and I. Though both modes utilize interviews, the Performative mode uses a more relaxed and informal method of interviewing that comes off as more spontaneous. The interviews are not inside with a white background, but outside and interactive with the environment. The camera may or may not be steady, but it tends to stay focused on the subject. The camera provides the audience with scenes as seen from the point of view of the film maker, with traveling shots and whimsical interactions that keep the film interesting and adventurous.

The Reflexive mode uses unique methods to break expectations in a refreshing way, but a potentially frustrating way if it is not expected. Along with filming methods, there is also an element of voice-overs, and to some extent an explanation of how the film process was developing. The Performative mode also goes explores the elements of unique film making but in a way that is interactive within the message that is being delivered to the audience. A personal tone can feel even more intimate in the Performative mode than the Reflexive mode due to the style that the scenes would be filmed in. Both modes produce unique and interesting films but with different intentions behind their messages. 

Night and Fog is a seminal work in documenting the Holocaust in its raw inhumanity. How does the filmmaker capture this? How does Resnais choose to represent war and the Holocaust in unique ways? Think about the visual and aural approaches.

Filmed in 1955, Night and Fog remains one of the most haunting pieces of war aftermath a person can see. To capture the aftereffects of the war, film director Alain Resnais used scenes of the abandoned Holocaust camps filmed in color to juxtapose the harsh black and white scenes of the camp during its active days of World War II (Barnouw 180). Though the scenes Resnais switches back and forth from are filmed in different time periods, the camp and the inhumanities that took place there still take center stage in Night and Fog. As a documentary, the movie takes its audience back in time by using scenes they were just introduced to and transitioning quickly to black and white film.

The style of the documentary is a particularly powerful way to show the inhumanity of the Holocaust. The color scenes show empty bunkers and rooms that hide their dark past through minute details. The scene in which the camera walks the audience through an empty gas chamber becomes even more disturbing when the shot focuses in on the fingernail scratches in the ceiling. The horrified audience is then shown black and white film of the gas chamber being used. It is a grotesque history lesson, but one with a purpose and message to send. The narration helps with this message, and becomes one of the most important features in Night and Fog.

The effects of the war and its aftermath are explained to the audience with the help of the unseen, but heard narrator. His voice carries authority, but maintains a neutral and emotionally distanced level of inflection. The images in the film are emotional enough to move the audience without the encouragement of the narrator, and Resnais decided well when choosing to have the narrator depend on facts about the Holocaust when explaining a scene. The emotions that Resnais conveys through the background music are not always the obvious one, but it still works within the film since the topic can be overwhelming at times. The music only encourages the pace of the scene, not the type of emotional response. It takes an untraditional approach, but it helps the audience refocus at times on what the narrator is saying. This encourages the audience to form their own opinions of the inhumanity within the scenes they are shown and come to their own conclusions about what is means to be valued as a living human being. Resnais shows the war and Holocaust as dehumanizing events for everyone involved, and effectively disturbs any romanticism that developed in the decade after its occurrence.

Choice 1: Compare Man with a Movie Camera to films from the painterly mode (Rain, Berlin: Symphony of a City, Balet Mecanique, etc.) that Barnouw discusses and/or that we watched in class.  What influenced these types of films?  How did these films influence the documentary genre?  What is innovative about these films?

The Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov was a piece that came out of Russia in the late 1920’s. It sought to show the city in a futuristic manner, focusing on the machines that helped run the city and the processes that were required for it to function. Vertov filmed the working class through the “cinema eye” and used his camera to show truth and life in ways that an audience wouldn’t otherwise experience it (Barnouw 58).

 As a documentary, it could get abstract at times with the technical manipulation of the film to achieve perspective variety. However, it focused on the daily life of citizens and not actors, using their everyday routines as guidance for scenes. This focus on the unscripted and seemingly ordinary developed its own painterly genre within the film industry, producing many documentaries that broke away from fiction film styles. The audience watching Man with a Movie Camera was shown scenes of life coming into the world and leaving it, trolleys, and even the editing process itself. It was a film that was widely appreciated in theaters- the result of the audience’s fascination at the time concerning their own routines through another’s perspective. Their lives were being documented and at the same time given a voice by being included in the film, an aspect that would later develop into narrative story telling documentaries (Nichols 132). 

Documentary films that were created around this era were often focused on perspective, developing into the painterly mode genre in which the visual manipulations of light and imagery guided movie scenes. They tended not to be based on stories, like Man with a Movie Camera, and usually did not follow a rising and falling plot. This was the result of the influence that painters, musicians, and other artists brought to cinema during the 1920’s (Barnouw 71). Images were the focus of these films, just as it would be in a painting. The result was abstract films that let the audience gain a different perspective on mundane objects or daily life. An example of this is the film Balet Mecanique, the creative work of Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphey. This 1929 film focused on the everyday items and events that someone could come across in ordinary circumstances (Barnouw 72). It used interesting image reversal techniques, a kaleidoscope effect, and repetition to make ordinary mechanics take on their own life and characterizations.

Not every film in the painterly genre was prone to being so abstract. Another 1929 classic is the documentary Rain, a film of tranquil and calming images that allowed the audience to look at a rainstorm for its beauty without having to worry about getting caught in it (Barnouw 78).  Filmed by Joris Ivens, it took on a painterly documentary approach and was similar to Man with a Movie Camera because it did not follow any characters or have a story plot , but instead followed the adventures of raindrops as they traveled through town. The film differed from Man with a Movie Camera concerning the filming techniques used, which zoomed in and focused on the patterns that rain made in the city landscape, creating beautiful imagery of the city reflected in puddles. The puddles created an impressionist effect of the city and turned passing citizens into living works of art.

The painterly documentaries were created in the 1920’s and were popular up until the introduction of films with audio and dialogue. Though quickly disregarded once sound swept through films, the painter-as-documentarist genre contributed wonderful films to history, even a sub-genre of city symphonies, in which the city became the focus of the film and the people in it merely part of a larger landscape (Barnouw 81). Films like Man with a Movie Camera set up the foundation for documentaries that encouraged the interaction of the camera with its surroundings, something that audiences now subconsciously expect (Nichols 187).