hi

     Hi. It's been so long my bones feel different. Okay A-level I'm locking in. In class we viewed a number of full length documentaries and shorter op-docs, and as someone who never watches documentaries, they were really interesting watches for me. Usually I opt more for watching movies, so to see such a different style of production while being discussed in the same way was a pretty cool experience. 

    The first doc we watched was American Promise (2013). It was about two Black teenage boys in New York and their experience with attending a very demanding school at an early age. Although it was about their personal lives, it also went over deep discussion about the pressures that schools and parents put on children and the significance of race in these educational and demanding environments. I found the stories of both of the subjects, Seun and Idris, to be super intriguing with how their family and school struggles differed. It was such an engaging and interesting doc all together, I really liked watching it. Its use of music was a highlight too, I noticed myself getting a bit emotional at times through how the doc used music, specifically when Seun and Idris hug at their middle school graduation. It was a really memorable doc overall, though one thing I thought it was missing was how the production of the doc impacted the lives of the boys. Having cameras following you around consistently throughout your whole adolescence has gotta impact you somehow, would've been nice to see that. A good introduction to docs, especially since it was very conventional to the genre.

    The second doc we viewed was Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010). The doc told the story of Thierry Guetta, Mr. Brainwash, and how he became a renown "street artist" after following street artists with a camera for years. This one was very different... but super entertaining to watch. The progression of Thierry from start to end is so, so engaging to watch and it felt very unpredictable at times. Since the doc was talking about the past, I really liked how it used interviews in present day with interviewees who were a part of the story in the past. It allowed the viewer to pretty much get inside their head at the time and that was such a cool addition, alongside adding the interviewee's thoughts in hindsight. It also explored a world I was completely unfamiliar with, as I knew nothing about street art or who Banksy was beforehand. Really good doc overall, it showed me a different perspective on how to produce a doc, with it using interviews from the present while relying mostly on footage from the past.

    After that, we watched a much more forgettable doc, sadly. This was a doc series called Abstract (2017) on Netflix. I call in forgettable because I honestly forgot we watched it, but it is a really cool doc. The doc series covers a wide range of artists and the unique art they do. It was really interesting to see how different artists approach the art they do, but it was nice to find a common factor between them, that being that they all enjoy what they do and have a sense of pride overall. The first doc in the series we watched was about costume design and the subject was Ruth Carter, who work on the costume design for Black Panther (2018), Do the Right Thing (1989), and many other films that have to do with Black, American culture and community. Learning more about the thought process behind the costumes in these films was really interesting to watch, and as someone who is considering going into character design, pretty insightful. I watched the episode about illustration, with Christoph Niemann, independently. This episode was very, very different, with constant animation being added in its b-roll and most of the b-roll having a creative, not-very-slice-of-life esc style to it. Niemann said the reason was because he didn't find the personal aspect of his life necessary to show in the doc, only the art aspect of his life, which was a very unique choice. The illustration episode lies in creativity and untruthfulness, and I found that to be really interesting.

    The last docs we watched in class was the short op-docs featured on the New York Times website. I watched one titled A Robust Heart, it consisted of pure interviews with butchers, their relationship with their work, family, and fathers. It had no music, and never cut to b-roll, it was a very intimate doc and it clearly wanted the viewer to fully focus on what the subjects were saying and how they felt saying it. This would later come back when I worked on my own doc. It revealed a lot to me about these types of jobs that need physical strength and conform the societal idea of masculinity. The doc highlighted the emotions of these men, which isn't typical of masculinity. It was a really cool doc, one of my favorite we watched. I also watched Now I'm in the Kitchen, which was dramatically different than anything else I watched. No real footage was used, instead, the doc is made up of a crayon-esc animation as a daughter recounts her relationship with her mother and their connection to cooking. Its uniqueness made it very special and super cool to watch. Both docs deviated pretty heavily from doc conventions and really built their own identity, I admire that. 

    All these docs really helped me develop my doc later on, as they gave me a really good grasp on the aspects that make up a doc like when to use b-roll, when not to use b-roll, how to film interviews, etc. Like A Robust Heart and American Promise both helped me specifically in one part of my doc, where an interviewee started discussing something pretty emotional at the end. I decided to play slower piano music with no cuts to b-roll because they were techniques in the docs I washed. I also enjoyed watching these docs themselves since they were a pretty wonderful introduction to the genre.