Olivia Swales

For this final documentary project of the semester, I have chosen to create a documentary that is characterized by a mix of the observational  and poetic modes of documentary filmmaking with a “thick description” photo essay.  The observational mode of documentary filmmaking is characterized by an emphasis on “direct engagement with the everyday life of subjects as observed by an unobtrusive camera” (Nichols 31).  The poetic mode of documentary filmmaking “emphasizes visual associations, tonal or rhythmic qualities, descriptive passages, and formal organization (Nichols 31).  And lastly, a “thick description” photo essay involves deep analysis and description through commentary and visual images.  Upon first thought because the poetic mode lacks the more direct, personal engagement with the subject that is involved with observational filmmaking, the two modes seem at odds with each other. However, through this set of images I argue the two can pleasantly coexist.  I think this is possible because the poetic meaning of the work has been applied in post-production–meaning that I shot with an observational eye and then found ways to associate the images with one another and add meaning through the use of diptychs.

Since this is my last semester at St. Edward’s, I decided what better way to end the semester than with a group of images that I can look back at and remember my life as a student.  Over the past three weeks, I have basically lived in study/work mode–I wanted to finish my schooling with my best efforts, going out with a bang in a way.  So, in order to document my last few days, I brought my camera and a notepad everywhere I went that was involved with school and or homework.  I wanted to always be prepared should an interesting scene or occasion take place.  By carrying it around all the time, my camera became an extension of myself.  I wanted to unobtrusively observe the state of life happening around me–in just a few days, I will be finished with life as an undergrad and never will I return.   Also explained by Nichols, one of the goals of the observational mode is to allow the audience to “realize that the filmmaker exists on the same plane of human existence as his or her social actors” (157).  By including images of not only my work space but also communal working environments, I am showing myself to exist in the same realm as the other students pictured in this set of images. I purposefully did not include any images of myself so that it the work as a whole would have greater context and application to the other students in similar positions.  This effort relates the film back to the poetic mode in that any sense of “extended engagement between the filmmaker and subject is frequently modest, at best” (Nichols 156).

This collection of images depicts not only my study habits, but also the atmosphere of school during final’s week, artifacts of student life, and little tangential scenes that brought joy or relief to me during this incredibly stressful time period.  (For further explanation of images, refer to captions in gallery.)*  I wanted to capture the quirky personality of St. Edward’s, this amazing place, that has made me feel so accepted and included for the past four years.  Rather than leaving each image to stand alone, I chose to create a series of diptychs in which the two images placed together are somehow associated.  Some associations between images are purely aesthetic while others are more related according to time, space, or subject matter.

One of the things I kept in mind while working on the assignment is the ability of the essay film (or photo essay) to freely flow fiction and nonfiction.     Now that school is coming to an end, the original truths found in the images seem to fade in a way.  As described by Tracy in “The essay film”, “loss is the primary motor of the modern essay film: loss of belief in the image’s ability to faithfully reflect reality; loss of faith in the cinema’s ability to capture life as it is lived; loss of illusions about cinema’s ‘purity’, its autonomy from the other arts or, for that matter, the world” (Tracy).  I find the truth represented in images to be usually subjective and contextual.   These images refer to a certain time and place in my life that will no longer exist come Saturday, May 10.  They were shot with a specific intention of capturing the essence of the ending to my student life.  Of course, the images will always be real artifacts of a previous state, but their meaning and relevance become slightly immaterial as I move into a new phase of life.  The truth exists in these photos as I am a student, they are representations of everything I saw, felt, and had to complete in order to graduate.

 

I have not been able to successfully upload the images into a gallery on this site, so I have created a Facebook album featuring them–it should be public.  Please email me if you cannot get access: oswales@gmail.com. 

 

* detailed captions soon to come once the upload is cleared

After reading “The essay film” from the BFI website, this particular phrase or sentence stuck with me–“the essay film moves blithely between the realms of fiction and non-fiction, complicating the terms of both”.  The authors continue on to explain that it is a form that “seems to accommodate the two sides of that divide at the same time, that can navigate from documentary to fiction and back” (Tracy).  The ability to go between the two realms fascinated me.  Later in the reading, the authors explain a shift from physical presence of monetarists to a kind of “felt absence” found by film-essayists (Tracy).  To oversimplify, “loss is the primary motor of the modern essay film: loss of belief in the image’s ability to faithfully reflect reality; loss of faith in the cinema’s ability to capture life as it is lived; loss of illusions about cinema’s ‘purity’, its autonomy from the other arts or, for that matter, the world” (Tracy).  

So for this final doc mode, I decided to do a photo essay of my neighborhood.  Of course, photos present some sort of truth, but I often find that truth to be largely contextual.  Are these the actual houses from my neighborhood?  Are they represented in their actual order and significance? Do they say anything standing alone, standing together, or anything at all?  Since essay films are allowed to meander between the two realms, I feel like I can make what I want of the images.  I wanted the neighborhood to by my community, to know the people on either side of me, to be able to borrow an egg or two in times of need, to have someone to wave to as I pull into the driveway at the end of the day, to feel safe, to make me feel part of something… Sometimes, this can be the case.  I see the same people walking their dogs at the same times everyday, so there is a wave or two.  One time one of my neighbors have alerted me that my foundation was gushing out water when my interior kitchen pipes burst and walls collapsed and another called to tell me a giant tree limb had collapsed on my roof after a long storm.  However, the overall tone from these images is a feeling of absence of life.  That connectivity that I longed for can’t be seen.  This is my second year in the house and I feel no more or less part of the community.

Even if I don’t feel connected to part of this community, these images can serve as historical and periodical artifacts.  Unlike the majority of the neighborhoods around me, mine remains relatively unkept and untouched–the original style bungalows remain standing.  On all surrounding streets in this neighborhood, these smaller houses are being torn down and McMansions are being erected with perfectly manicured landscaping.  Two years later and I still have not seen anyone come into or out of, or any lights turn on or off in two of the houses with overgrown lawns.  Are they hidden jungles or eyesores of junk?  Within the next two decades, I believe my neighborhood will no longer look like this.  A different atmosphere will be depicted–one not as naturally Austin.

Welcome to my morning routine, but backwards. BEWARE: the song used in the video was created by Marconi Union in collaboration with the British Academy of Sound Therapy.  It was created with the intention of relaxing the mind–“it [induces] a 65% reduction in overall anxiety and brought test subjects’ resting pulse rates to 35% of their usual resting rates.” The songs guitar, piano, and manipulated field recordings (i.e. waves) were strung together in a way that supposedly induces a trance-like state.  SO! what I mean by this is that this song was created to slow down the wavelengths of your brain so it would not be a good idea to watch or listen to this while having to function at an alert level.

For as long as I can remember, I have always struggled with managing my stress and anxiety levels.  My earliest and most prominent recollection of my anxiety, sometime around 6 or 7 years old,  manifested itself in a recurring nightmare.  This nightmare would prevent me from falling asleep at the beginning of the night, wake up up in the middle of it, and prevent me from getting any restful sleep.  Oddly enough, even thought I haven’t had it in ages, it is the only nightmare that I ever have or can remember.  When it was significantly affecting my sleep patterns though, I remember going to a sleep therapist for some coping mechanisms and insight.  She suggested that I should come up with some sort of routine that I repeat before I go to sleep every night and wake up every morning.  Along with my routine behavior, I should consider listening to soothing sounds when I am trying to rest in an effort to essentially reprogram my mind patterns surrounding sleep time.  The repetition of familiar actions and sounds would hopefully make me feel more safe or secure or in control when it came time to rest because I would know what exactly to expect and when to expect it.  So, my mum and I worked together on establishing and maintaining a nighttime routine that I would follow basically for the next few years.

Fast forward to today, of course my routine has evolved significantly since I was in elementary school, but I still stick to having the same routine every night and morning.  I listen to my relaxing music, brush my teeth and hair, wash my face, blah blah and repeat the next day in the same order.  Every morning I wake up and function on an almost robotic level, going through the motions of what I do all the time without really thinking about what, why, or how I am doing something.  Once I wake up a little bit more, I usually have to go back and readdress what has been done so far–I always choose my clothes before I shower but always end up changing some part of it before leaving, I cook the same eggs every morning but never end up wanting or enjoying them, I check my emails and the weather only to have to go back and recheck them because I didn’t take in any of the read or seen information, etc… I have found that the songs I listen to I am so used to that they are no longer relaxing in the way they once were.  They, along with my routine, are almost more symbolic of my efforts to get to sleep.  I say efforts because they are often futile.  So, my routine ends up being inefficient and inappropriate for what I want to be doing.

My thought process behind creating this little film was the question what I am doing, the order I am doing it in, and why I do it.  I wanted to retrace my routine. In the book Introduction to Documentary, Nichols explains that a reflexive documentary falling under the reflexive mode has a voice characterized by “self-questioning, a voice of doubt, even radical doubt about the certainty or fixity of knowledge” (211).  As for the performative mode, he explains that this voice is characterized by a “strongly personal, engaged orator pursuing the truth of what it feels like to experience the world in a particular way” (211). At another point in the book, he also explains how the six modes of documentary can be overlapping, and are not necessarily definitive by nature.  So, with this in mind, I approached this assignment with both reflexivity and performance in mind.

The reflexive mode of documentary calls into question the “motto that a documentary films only as good as its content is compelling.” Unlike previous modes of documentary, this mode not only pays attention to what is being represented but also how it is being portrayed.  A great example of this sort of trend can be found in Trinh Minh-ha’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam.  The film relies on interviews with women from Vietnam to describe the oppressive conditions they have encountered since the end of the war; however, later in the film the audience comes to learn that these “interviews” of experiences are instead staged scenes portrayed by Vietnamese American immigrants.  The interviews had originally been conducted in Vietnam by someone else with other women and then transcribed and editing by Minh-ha.  This shows a conscious effort to have control over what and how the result is concluded by the audience. At its best, reflexive documentary prompts the viewer to a “heightened form of consciousness about hit ore her relation to a documentary and what it represents.”

This differs from the performative mode in that performative mode documentaries “raise questions about what knowledge actually amounts to.”  In other words, what else other than factual information goes into our understanding of the world.  The performative mode is typified by a more direct and personal relationship between the filmmaker and the subject.  For example, documentaries likes Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation and Agnès Verda’s The Gleaners and I emphasize the “emotional complexity” of the experience from the perspective of the filmmaker him- or herself.”  Also, filmmakers tend to interact with their subjects through interviews, conversation, provocation, or encounters that have power to alter the given situation-it can be known that something is at risk when conducting the fieldwork.  There is a much stronger emphasis on the emotional and social impact of the work on the audience. In The Gleaners and I, Varda examines not only the food that is being gleaned but also the bigger picture of heritage and tradition being gleaned.

Rather than questioning knowledge itself, the reflexive mode of documentary instead questions the principles that underlie traditional filmmaking and social representation.  Man with a Movie Camera exemplifies this in that the film draws attention to the actual filmmaking process by showing both editing and filming taking place in various scenes. The reflexive mode attempts to deliver a particular message, whereas the performative mode’s message is subjective.

(All quotes taken from Bill Nichols’ Introduction to Documentary unless otherwise noted)

I first became interested in cameras and films and photography when I was fifteen years old.  The summer before I turned sixteen, I was at a figure skating training camp in Switzerland preparing for one of the biggest competitions I had ever participated in.  I had spent the last eight or so years of my life practicing everyday to get myself to this point–my entire life was centered on figure skating.  

As I was warming up for my short program (the first round of events), I threw my body into a stretch before it was warmed up enough and threw out my back tearing a muscle and almost herniating a disk.  After many doctors appointments and physical therapy once I returned stateside, I decided that I had to leave my figure skating world and enter the real one again.  I had been homeschooled and surrounded only by other figure skaters for the past two years so it was a difficult transition my first year back in the normal school system with normal kids.  I didn’t quite know how to relate to having homework, weekends off, or really much of the social scene.  I found it more enjoyable to sit behind a lens and silently observe everything that was happening around me.  I had tons of little artifacts of real life that I could study in hopes of more understanding.

When given this assignment about either expository, observational, or poetic modes of documentary, I immediately chose to go with the observational mode because it reminded me so much about my initial lure into the photo and film world. In his book Introduction to Documentary, Bill Nichols the observational mode of documentary as one that emphasizes a direct engagement with the everyday life of subjects as observed by an unobtrusive camera.”  Since SXSW will be happening in almost all areas of Austin for the next ten days or so, I decided to focus my documentary on the street life surrounding the festival.  I used my camera to document the growing crowds, the funny characters, and buzzing atmosphere caused by this attraction.  No other week in Austin, or many other places for that matter, is quite as obtrusive and exhausting yet totally exhilarating and enjoyable as this one.

      Leni Riefenstahl changed the face of documentary forever.  Her film, Triumph of the Will, is considered by many historians to be the most successful propaganda film ever made.  Riefenstahl was a prominent admirer of Hitler and in 1933, she received a call from him asked her to create a propaganda film based on his rally.  What makes Triumph of the Will so unique from other films made in this era is Riefenstahl brought beautiful cinematography to documentary film.  She accomplished this iconic cinematography by building all sorts of bridges and apparatuses to hold cameras from all different vantage points–more than 30 cameras and 120 cameramen were used to document the rally.  She was able to create new perspectives to view the rally by employing so many different tools and assistants–my favorite perspective is that from the moving camera attached to one of the back flag poles.  This technique of viewing from different perspectives highlighted the power of Hitler and his movement–it showed a passionate, supportive audience excited over an all powerful singular man.  The rally attendees captured were primarily women and young children, thus portraying Hitler as a patriarch figure to the masses.  

Another significant difference that makes this film unique is the lack of commentary.  Many films at this time relied on commentary to lead the viewer to the film’s message–the verbalization of the message was left to Hitler and other Nazi leaders.  Riefenstahl considered “any commentator an ‘enemy of the film'” (Barnouw p 103).  Instead, she communicated her message through perfectly times scenes of marching men, cheering, men covered in uniform, women and children in the audience, and even shots of the clouds.  She contrasted Hitler to all of those things making him look all-powerful.  

The success of this film is viewed differently by different scholars.  Because the film was so beautiful and convincing, many blamed Riefenstahl for rallying more members to Hitler’s cause.  In the end though, many other nations used portions of the film in their own opposition propaganda films.  “nothing else depicted so vividly the demonic nature of the Hitler leadership, ad the scarcely human discipline supporting it.” (Barnouw p. 105).

Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental documentary that was produced in 1929 in Soviet Russia.  Rather than featuring one particular set of characters, the documentary presents citizens working, playing, and living in rapidly urbanizing cities.  What brought this film such acclaim is the director’s use of new cinematic techniques to deliver his message.  Some of the techniques used are double exposure, slow and fast motion, split screens, and innovative tracking shots.  These techniques came together to create more of a montage of beautiful shots than a typical, linear film.  Before this documentary, many of these techniques have never been used or seen before in professional documentary or filmmaking. Because many of the films produced prior to this employed slower less complicated editing techniques, man viewers found Man with a Movie Camera to have an unsettling pace. Dziga Vertov, the director, attempted to highlight industrialization and urbanization in the film, which in turn gave it a very modernist tone.  One interesting aspect of Man with a Movie Camera that Barnouw discusses is how we, the viewers, see both the making of the film and the film that is being made at the same time.  At the time, it was commonly thought that filmmaking equipment was relatively sedentary.  However, Vertov showed film’s ability to go anywhere.  Throughout the film we see him or his assistant setting up scenes on top of mountains, climbing bridges, and riding on top of cars.  In effect, the film holds a sort of playfulness that is often simultaneously stimulating and baffling.

Films from the painterly mode on the other hand, feature a different sort of filmmaking.  During the 1920’s artists, writers, and painters flooded the film scene.  Like Man with a Movie Camera, many of the films produced during this era were typified by their lack of plot or climax.   As Barnouw suggests, to the film was thought of as “pictorial art in which light was the medium, and which involved fascinating composition problems in that the interrelationship of forms was always evolving” (p. 72).  This new sort of “abstract documentary” took familiar objects and used them for the basis of interplaying movements—the artist begins with “actuality” from which he creates his own “expressive synthesis”.  A perfect example of this can be seen in Ballet Mechanique (1925)—much of this film is composed by “moving gears, levers, pendulums, eggbeaters” and leaves the viewers yearning for the completion of repetitious tasks.  In Berlin: Symphony of the City (1927), the viewer again follows patterns and mechanics and industry and no real plot is featured other than the progression of the day from dawn to dusk.  Throughout much of the film, people form parts of the patterns, but they are not the actual focus.

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