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Dong Kim screening response: Sherman's March - and the beauty of documentary filmmaking!

Sherman’s March was a really fun documentary about a journey into the filmmaker’s real life. The film is very self-reflexive, as we constantly hear the voice of the filmmaker, him planning the documentary, the hidden variables of romance, his change of mind, and so on. The filmmaker walks the historical path of Sherman’s march in the Civil War era, but it is strangely about his own minds and feelings. The subject matter of the documentary will be ‘the improbablility of life, such as meeting a girl who was accidentally filmed the other day in a blind date.
Like many things in our lives, filmming documentary is all about trying to controll the unpredictable situation. Planning a self-documentary itself has a flaw that something totally unexpected may happen and change the direction of the documentary. Watching this film while I was planning my documentary about this Homeless newsletter gave me a lot of things to think about. Everything seemed perfect until I brought the camera out and find out that Edge wasn’t out there that day. Sometimes, I had to miss a golden moment because I was in the middle of changing the battery. This unpredictability can be a drawback of documentary filmmaking, but the filmmaker of Sherman’s March makes it a very interestng subject matter.
I found it most amusing and interesting at the same time whenever there is a motel scene with the filmmaker by himself talking to the camera. I guess people have to face their true self when they are bythemselves, especially at nighttime. When the actress girl leaves for her audition, the filmmaker is left alone in a double sweet room, saying something like ‘I don’t know where this documentary is going now.’ This somewhat miserable moment(laugh) in documentary fimmaking was something that I could totally understand and sympathize. It is every documentary filmmaker’s common sense of being lost, and through the honest narration, the film makes the viewers feel that eventually the film is about themselves and their lives. The honesty of the filmmaker makes it very interesting and focused. I think ‘self’ is always a good subject. Everyone is different, but that is why we get to imagine ourselves in that situation and have fun.
By the way, I came to know that the filmmaker got married with one of the girls he met in the movie. What a wonderful uncertainty are we living in!

Donghwan Kim screenign response: Burma VJ

Burma VJ was a very stunning piece of documentary, that it was full of action and harsh images, and the flow of the documentary, as the filmmaker VJs the footages coming from Burma, is very refreshing.
The shaky visuals and the un-tamed audio of heavy breathing of the cameraman and street noise in this documentary throws away the common voyeuristic point of view in many other documentaries, and immediately reveals that the filmmaker and the cameraperson are actually ‘part of’ the situation. The opening was very suspenseful, as the footages of very normal day of a Burma street, where people buy and sell things, go to work like usual, are shown with the filmmaker’s voice that says ‘something was going on in the streets, within the people.’ The memory of brutal suppression by the government in 1988 people of Burma’s fight for democracy keeps recurring, adding the suspense. It is a constant battle between the hope of ‘this time it will be better’ and the fear of massacre that already happened once.
The fear is unfiltered through the lens, as we see the cameraman quickly hide the camera when he sees a policeman. However, the voice says, ‘the heart is beating too fast, but we keep on shooting.’ The Burmese monks’ march begins and the viewpoint is right in the middle of the crowd. The audience immediately walks and feels the atmosphere of the Burmese street as the cameraman bravely walks inside the march. This is a different kind of documentary, that Burma VJ is about something the filmmaker belongs to and fights for. It is such a different perspective that keeps the viewers from staying in the position of tourists to a foreign world. It urges emotional reaction to the viewers, and unlike most of the other documentaries which try to demand something to the viewer, such as Michael Moore’s documentaries or Chicago 10, the insider’s point of view becomes instantly very persuasive without many words.
The failure of the Burmese people’s fight for democracy is very heartbreaking. The brutal violence pictured in the footages is followed by the silence of the filmmaker in a shadow(when he waits for the cameraman to answer the phone). This was a very powerful moment of sadness and anger. The filmmaker throughout the film is hidden in a shade, and as well as the sense of danger the filmmaker is in, the figures in shadows shows that the film is not about making heroes, but about letting the people know of the outrageous situations in Burma.

Donghwan Kim Screening response: Daughter from Danang

Daughter from Danag is about the family reunion taking place after about fourty years of separation, the clash between two different cultures, and the drama about the Asian American identity. The Vietnamese mother had to let go of her little daughter to a U.S. program called “Operation Babylift”, which adopts the Vietnames children to an American family in order to protect them, as well as trying to make the war look more humane to the U.S. public. Heidi, the daughter is half American, because her father was an American GI. Thus, with her Caucasian looks, she adapted to the new environment in Tennesse, grew up, and got married to a white man.
However, she always had a desire to meet with her real parents, and she contacts many agencies to find the mother in Vietnam. The film starts as Heidi knows where her mother and the Vietnamese family is. She talks about the pressure of facing the ‘real mother,’ talks about the experience of being adapted to a white family, how she felt about her adopted mother. Then she goes to Vietnam in order to meet her biological family.
There are very dramatic and emotional moments, especially when the mother instantly notices Heidi and cries on the sight of her daughter. A few days pass in a dream-like happiness of reunion. However, as time goes, Heidi slowly realizes the size of the gap between the life and culture of her mother and American culture. The tension grows, as smothering heat and humidity of Vietnam annoys Heidi more and more. Finally, the big blow, hits her as her mother and her biological brothers and sisters ask her for financially aiding the family and take care of her old mother. For Vietnamese people, it is most natural for a grown up daughter to participate in taking care of her old parents, but Heidi cannot stand the pressure. A hysteria takes over the happiness, and Heidi leaves Vietnam with a mixed feeling.
This ending was very stunning to me. Everthing had to be an emotional extreme when the two separated worlds meet each other, and the misunderstanding was inevitable. The film tells that the War that separated the mother and daughter was too overwhelming that its effect lingered on aftere 30 years. Also, it provided a very subjective narration of an Asian American’s identity as being under the umbrella of American culture while still wanting to find her origin. The drama, the tension, the introspection of one’s identity.. It is a good film to watch.

Self-Evaluation

So, the semester has come to an end, and here are my final thoughts.

First off, I want to congratulate everyone for finishing the semester and their respective documentaries! I have to say Dong and Jim, I think both of your docs came a long way and were really cool to watch at the end of the semester. Kelly, your piece is beautiful and a really successful doc. And Brett and Lacie, your piece looks incredibly polished, and I think you could find a home for it in broadcast television or on the Web; it's a really successful piece as well.

As for my own project, I have to say I'm pretty happy with it. Michelle and I had a lot of bad luck this semester what with the internet mishap and pissing off our first couple, then finding a second couple who eventually disappeared so close to the end of the semester. Then, the Wiener Dog races happened so late in the semester that our final project was very rushed. Still, we managed to put something together in the last two weeks of school. I think the final piece is entertaining and tells a good story, start to finish. It makes me laugh, and it seems like other people enjoyed it, so that's probably the best thing you can say about a doc like this one. I think the use of epic, melodramatic music really does a lot for the piece, and following Ari and Sandy from start to finish really ties the piece together where it could otherwise be very chaotic.

I do think the doc is a little long, and the ending was rushed and very hurriedly put together. I would like to have spent more time focusing on the good things the festival does for Buda, and there's nothing in there about the Wiener Dog rescue organizations, which I think is an important thing to get across about the festival. The only "message" our piece could really offer at this point is that the people who come to this event have a great attitude and don't easily get disappointed about losing, but I think the festival has more to say about community involvement, giving back to the community, charity and being a good, considerate, generous and loving pet owner. Those things fell by the wayside in order to tell a complete narrative, and I think further edits of the piece could keep the whole story in place while finding room for those other elements without making the final piece half an hour long.

In the future, if I had to cover an event like this, I think I would spend more time dealing with the mic setup for capturing audio so that it's easier to edit the main subject's dialogue separate from the ambient noise. I'd also spend more time up front getting to know the festival organizers, getting interviews with them ahead of time, and making myself and the crew known to every employee so there isn't any confusion about who we are or why we are there on the day of shooting. That gave us a little trouble with access to the racetrack; it would have given us more opportunities if we'd done a little bit more homework ahead of time. I'd also try to include my project partner more often, as I assume this is the aspect of this process that created some tension and made the final editing process very one-sided.

Overall, I think Of Wieners & Losers is a fun little festival piece that tells a fun, humorous and complete narrative; it's a bit rushed at parts and relies on some cliches to get the story across, but I think it provides just enough entertainment to keep the viewer watching while providing some insight into a world many people may know nothing about.

Studs Terkel

STUDS TERKEL is about a man who has made an iconic history at the Chicago radio station WFMT where he interviewed many important players in decades of American Culture. He's interview Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, John Sayles, etc. The film is a portrait about him, and though it has current interviews with Studs and his peers, it focuses on an historical perspective of his life. The film is essentially a homage to Sterkel as he passed away in 2008.



The documentary is pretty straight-laced in terms of its structure and style by creating as holistic of a picture as they could of a figure like Studs. So, what makes this documentary particularly straight-laced? Well first and foremost, the filmmakers were able to get primary interviews from Studs himself. As a matter of fact, he died short after their very last interview for the film. Arguably, what is more important however is all of the archived footage of Studs interacting with his interviews. All of the interviews he did with WFMT were also archived on tape and used sparingly to add interesting moments in his history. A lot of the tapes were actually turned into books. And finally, there were very many interviews with her peers and contemporaries. The obvious usage of these interviews really helped to illustrate the life and actions Studs was revered for.

One of the most valuable things in a documentary of this nature was to get the voice of the subject in current times, to give a sense of current relevance. I was reminded by Mimi Pickering's documentary in progress we watched earlier in the semester about an older woman who had led many protests and was an activist for rights of the disadvantaged for most of her adult life. These documentaries seemed to be made at the exact right time for their subjects as their stories culminate and their lives end, though not their legacy mind you!

Many considered him the master of America's oral history. And, Anna Deavere Smith states that "he's been absorbing and telling the American story for a very, very long time" and he did that like no else before or after.

Manufactured Landscapes

I really do watch a lot of documentaries on my own time, and lately have been pretty satisfied with the diverse styles and topics of docs I've been watching. One of my favorites this semester was called Manufactured Landscapes, directed by Jennifer Baichwal. It is based on the photography of Edward Burtynsky who is known for his imagery of what he's coined "manufactured landscapes", factories, dumps, wastelands of human created trash and terrain of disregarded technology. The film follows Burtynsky on some of his trips to capture his photos, and is able to give context to many of his works. The photo above is a still from the film and is of Chinese children sitting on piles of plastic and metal. The circular disks are the plastic circles with the numbers 0-9 from old school rotary dial telephones - manufactured in China, then dumped in China when there's no where for excess or the waste to go.

The film plays like a combination of a documentary and a photo essay. I started in photography, so I've started really liking these hybrid films. Recently seeing some of the work of Donna DeCesare and having photojournalism students in our class has really gotten me to refocus on photography, and making sure that each frame I film has the potential to stand alone as a photograph.

A good example of this hybrid, but also how film can show things and create emotions that photos can't, is the intro to Manufactured Landscapes, which is posted below. The intro is a solid EIGHT MINUTE tracking shot inside a Chinese factory. The first time I watched it, halfway through the shot I called my friend to tell them to watch this movie. As each minute ticks by, you think SURELY this shot is about to end...end....end. After the shot it shows a still photo from above with the title. Not quite the same. A single photograph could never capture the extreme scale of that factory, while also letting the viewer experience the sounds, energy, bustle, and personality of the people as they work as this amazing shot does.

Towards the end of the film it begins to look more at factories in depth, working conditions, and how people are affected. It is a very oddly gorgeous film, as Burtynsky is finding an ironic beauty in the destruction and mess that we've made all over the world. Slowly paced, but definitely worth checking out.

Spellbound

Since watching a clip of Spellbound in class, I have watched the documentary three times. Not because I thought it was the best movie ever, but because I kept taking away different things whenever I'd watch it.

The first time I watched it was because I wanted to see it, it seemed cute and funny in class and I wanted to see the whole thing. However I was multitasking while watching it and didn't give it my full attention. It was enjoyable, but I couldn't say much past that. The next time I watched it was when my boyfriend was in town. We wanted a movie to watch, and I was trying to figure out how to break him into documentaries. I loved what Diane said about how Spellbound "is a good one to show your mom, so she knows what you're doing in film school. She'll think it's cute." Works the same with boyfriends.

It really is a light-hearted, straightforward and simple structure - kids in spelling bees, let's look at each of them and follow them to the National Bee. I think it's a great way to break someone into the idea of a non-fiction feature, like family and friends who don't know much about documentaries.

However, when I watched it with him I would get tense or frustrated if I felt like he missed a line or a doc convention that was cool or worked really well. It stressed me out so I watched it a third time by myself. The last time I really wanted to look at how they constructed each main kid as a character. I'm mostly interested in portrait and personal documentaries, so I'm trying to watch a bunch and see what things I like about some docs over others, what works, what doesn't, etc. For example, there were definitely some families that I was more drawn to and interested in than others, and some kids I'd rather spend time in their space and psyche than try to show a lot of their family or town if I didn't think it was as strong.

I really did like this movie though, I think it's something that makes documentary filmmaking feel more accesible because of its ease of story and event (though it could've been a a horrific process, who knows) and the likability of its protagonists.

The September Issue

The other day I was tired and in a bad mood so I thought I'd watch a low-impact, not too serious of a documentary and multitask by playing solitaire or something. And alas I came across The September Issue, a documentary about putting out an issue of Vogue. Simple and low-impact enough, right? Well, I didn't play any solitaire and have bought 3 issues of Vogue since. Sigh, I'm such a target for persuasion and consumerism.

The film documents the process of putting together the magazine's September issue, their most important and largest issue of each year. Though I'm known for liking clothes, I never follow the fashion industry - big names, how it works, etc. So this documentary blew my mind in terms of realizing what a HUGE and complex industry designer fashion is, the amount of money at stake, the power dynamic between people and companies, the power it has over consumerism, etc. The piece was not just a portrait of Vogue itself, but rather it's mysterious Editor in Chief Anna Wintour. Wintour has had this job for 22 years, and is 60 years old. She is a tiny, skinny 60 year old woman, and after watching this documentary, if I saw her on the street I'd turn a corner. The film as a whole was made to diffuse some of the mystery about Wintour and also give a backstage look at how Vogue works. I can't say I walked away with any life lesson or a changed perspective on anything, but filmmaker R.J. Cutler did a great job of capturing the essence of a world, industry, and idol of which I am completely unknowledgeable, and making me captivated viewer.

Though consistently interesting, I'd say one thing I felt was missing was a larger number of cohesive scenes and moments. The film does cover a great number of months, and has a lot it wants to show the viewer, but after a while some of the scenes and processes it was showing us (Anna reviewing photos from shoots, meeting with famous designers) seemed stringy and repetitive in topic, structure, and emotion. Every time a new facet to the world or magazine was introduced it was fascinating, but to keep coming back to similar things and not new ones caused the piece to start losing momentum.

Wintour is a mesmerizing lady, and I've been told that she did this documentary is a big deal, but by the end of it she wasn't as humanized as I would've expected or as I'm used to with documentary main characters. I understand that it's part of her personality and reputation to not be the most relatable person, surely she's not, and I'm amazed that this tiny 60 year old woman literally runs the fashion industry. But at the end of it, as a fashion outsider, I just felt kind of bitter that this is what she gets to do as her job, and the whole industry is this big crazy organism that I will never understand.

The Eyes of Me

This was my first outside event, back in the day. But if I can make any excuse for forgetting to write about my outside events as they happened, it's that instead of writing my immediate reaction, it's interesting (at least to me) to see what I ended up taking away from it and what I remember.

I haven't had any experience in animation, and haven't really had much exposure to it at all as a artistic implement in film, especially documentary. I had a love/hate relationship with the animation in The Eyes of Me. I think it was great as, not so much a representation of what the blind 'see' (since we can't say exactly), but rather in expressing the fact that they experience things much differently than seeing people. Obviously showing gray shapes when the character says something was blurry or foggy isn't a perfect representation how how she felt or what she saw, but it's a small step in creating an idea in the mind of the seeing of how the blind and visually impaired see their experiences and feelings, or even things as basic as glimpses of shape and light. There were a couple times that I felt like the animation was unmotivated, and I would've liked it to either be more pervasive or strictly limited to when the main characters were describing their visions, memories, dreams, etc. Because when it did feel unmotivated, I was concentrating more on the animation itself and not the character or story. The director did say he knew from the start he wanted to animation, and specifically that style of animation "because it's so cool".

Something that really blew my mind is that this was the first documentary from both of these filmmakers. They had a really great partnership though, and the Q&A afterwards was really inspiring and revealing (COMPLETE opposite of the Blaze Foley Q&A, thank goodness). Also, the story that we watch in The Eyes of Me is not the story they originally set out to make. I think I'm still a little ignorant about the time and process required when it comes to documentary production. I tell myself I know what's involved, but I don't think I'll truly be able to understand or respect it to its fullest until the day I'm trying to make my own feature documentary and I hit road blocks like they did - "Yeahh, this story's not working. What do we do instead...after all this time we've spent on this...."

A Veiled Revolution / Quest for Honor

Going to this screening, I didn't know A Veiled Revolution ( AVR) would be showing before Quest for Honor, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was a bit dated (just in time, not topic). It was beautiful and relavant, and compared to Quest for Honor had a hint of an archival look, that of course I loved so much. Some of the interviews are what really got me. To hear from the Egyptian women themselves from decades ago, who were all passionate and had different opinions amongst each other got me riled up that we have such strong opinions on them and their dress. Why do we care?? Why do we think we know what's best for them? The Egyptian women in the 1920's were the first to go in public unveiled. They already had a feminist movement from which came a change in dress. Starting in the 70's and continuing on, some women have started going back to the traditional 'Islamic dress', but by choice. I feel like our culture is incapable of viewing and understanding the Islamic dress as a choice and a personal statement. I'm sure that some women today would secretly confess that it is not their choice to wear it, but besides that, traditional Islamic dress is not required nor oppressive to all who wear it. I was really hit by those women who explained their move back to Islamic dress as a move to become closer to God and saving their appearance for their families and husband. This isn't something I would do or can relate to necessarily, but made me realized how incredibly ignorant we can be about other cultures, over and over across decades. After the screening that night I was on the phone with my boyfriend and we actually got in a fight about it. He was under the impression that it isn't fair and is oppressive. I'm typically the borderline feminist and would usually enraged about things like shrouding and the idea of Islamic dress. However, to see how passionate some of the women were about their choices, whether I'm on the same page as them or not, made me realize how muddled my own world views are of women in other cultures. After this film, I don't love or understand it completely, but I have a much higher respect for the women who believe in their culture and their morals and make such choices.

The main film screening, Quest for Honor, was also very good. I will admit, I remember much more about AVR than the feature. However my favorite idea or topic of the documentary was the movement for women's education, networking, and resources. In the past few years I have become much more interested and invested in women's rights, organizations, and resources so after the film my first reaction was wanting to show up and help at the women's center in the film. There was something very important and emotional in seeing women learning about politics in the mosque and reading the women's newspaper, while wearing traditional Islamic dress, especially after just learning about it in AVR.

Previously Unknown: The Legend of Blaze Foley

I'm going to write my outside event posts in backwards chronological order of their happening. Sorry for not writing right after I went to them.


Previously Unknown: The Legend of Blaze Foley is a biographical documentary about muscian Blaze Foley. I had never heard of Foley, and by the looks of the other people at the screening, his biggest fans are not exactly in my age bracket. In general I enjoyed the screening, but it was by no means one of my favorite docs, nor in a style that I would ever make one. The director, Kevin Triplett (no relation) has been working on this film for 10-12 years now. That makes my head and heart hurt. Foley was already deceased by the time he started, and Triplett didn't know or listen to Foley's music when he was alive. I thought that was really interesting, and was dying to know what motivated him to get into this topic and make this film. Surely something make him crazy passionate, otherwise how could've he have stuck with it for this long? But, when asked at the Q&A, Triplett responded, "I don't know why I made this documentary." ...And he was dead serious. He was interested and proud of his work, and yet seemed oddly apathetic on many levels.

The doc chronicled Foley's life and broke it down into chapters, 'The ___ Years" (insert where he was living or name he went by at the time). Every now and then it would cut away from the interviews and typical doc form into what appeared to be clips of a TV special done on Foley. However it was all part Triplett's own work. There were also fake commercials for Foley's CDs or compilations. They were funny, but for me were really jarring and distracting. Even the TV program format confused me sometimes. It was an entertaining and creative take on the feature doc, taking all these different elements of biographical programming and putting them together, but I don't know if I love it.

Also something I didn't really like, was the panel who joined the director were all people who'd appeared in the film, and all knew Foley when he was alive, and the crowd was full of friends and fans, so the Q&A turned into story time, inside joke swapping, and reminiscing about Foley. That's all fine and dandy, but I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there, it was kind of awkward. And Triplett couldn't relate either, so we weren't even talking about the film. The woman on the panel apparently used to date Foley, but only one relationship of Foley's was represented in the film, and it was just really awkward and confusing for her to be bringing up all these stories of the two of them. She even said 'I love her (the wife/girlfriend), but Blaze HAD other girlfriends'. I don't know, it just didn't seem like that was the discussion that needed to be going on after the film.

But anyway, I did enjoy it, and loved all the archive video and photos they had of Foley. Check it out and support K. Triplett!

Crooked Made Straight (2010)

CROOKED MADE STRAIGHT (2010) is a documentary exploring the life of an American doctor practicing in Ethiopia. The documentary is short but it packs a lot of information in a short amount of time. Out of the recent documentaries I've seen I would have to say this one kept me to most interested through out. Seeing many unfortunate medical conditions plaguing Ethiopians young and old truly was heart wrenching.



One of the main reasons as to why I was interested in the story of the film was the fact that it was primarily cinema verite type scenes. It showed him interacting with his patients. You could see his compassionate behavior in the way he dealt with them. There were interviews, but they were kept at a minimal level and did not overbear the narrative information. Additionally, the film's editing and sound design was very well done in that I did not notice any abrupt distractions from the flow of the film. The pace and transitions were very smooth throughout from beginning to end.

The primary allure to this documentary is that it is in a new environment, very different from the day to day life I experience. However, the film has little development in terms of an obvious narrative arc. It is more of a slice-of-life type documentary, which makes sense because of the length. I feel as though that the documentary still could have explored the doctor's personal struggles, etc.

Overall, the documentary was very intriguing and thought provoking due to its dealing of a new environment and by utilizing scenes of a verite style although more development in terms of personal conflict-resolution would have made the film all the more compelling.

No Impact Man: The Documentary

I first heard about the No Impact Man on the Colbert Report, so I found it funny when I watched the film that the first image you see is of The Colbert Report awning, and begins with his appearance on that show, then goes back 5 months to tell the whole story. With the influx of enviromental and green indivuals pieces that have gotten more popular in the last few years, I was a little skeptical of this project at first. However, I think it was a nice balance of 'big picture' and family photo. In short, Collin and his family took a vow to have no impact on the environment for an entire year - making no trash output, eating only natural food and flavors that came from within 250 of their home (in Manhattan), not using electricity, not using public transportation, not buying anything new, etc. Collin brought up the mantra of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and basically said, how much easier would it all be if we just could reduce our usage to none? Some say this is impossible, but you really just have to have the will.

Starting with showing all of the news coverge Collin's gotten and his television appearances and notoriety sets up the importance and success of his idea, instead of having the viewer feel like they're beginning with him and don't know the outcome. The combination of the intro and the fact that a three person family living in New York City is trying to go green (to the absolute extreme of the word) felt like a unique experience and story to be a part of as a viewer.

Right away the wife is introduced as a source of conflict (in terms of narrative). I was definitely rooting for her throughout, partly because marital conflict makes me uncomfortable, so I wanted her to participate and for them to get along, but also because I can see myself in her a bit, and I wanted to know that there was hope for people like us to change our ways. Collin is presented as an overly glorified savior of the enviroment (my opinion), and his wife is the average American consumer. This sets up a perfect mirco level struggle to play along with the bigger environmental themes that are emphasized. Often times I felt like she was unfairly picked on or portrayed, especially when they'd bring in the overly adorable toddler to take sides with the dad. That's not cool. But the wife did make a lot a progress, learned a lot, and was able to express herself throughout the process instead of going along with whatever Collin told her to. This was important because how Collin is portrayed makes the process look WAAAYY too easy. The wife is a good example of 'it's not easy, but there ARE things you can do to help, you can change your ways for the better even in small steps'.

Something that this documentary did well was create these amazing scenes within the scope of this larger project. That's something that Diane always stresses, is creating scenes and moments that are meaningful to the bigger picture, then building those together to tell the story. I really saw that apparent in this piece, as almost all of the small moments and scenes could've been short portraits or vignettes of this family. One of my favorites is shown in the picture above, and is where Collin has just thrown out all of their cosmetics and bathroom goods, and has made his own laundry detergent. Meanwhile the wife is in bed rolling her eyes and getting stressed out about losing all these things she's used to. Collin is doing the laundry in the bathtub and teaching his toddler how to wash the clothes by stepping on them. Finally the wife comes in to see what's going on and ends up rolling up her pants and getting in the tub with the rest of the family, the scene ending with Collin kissing his wife. SOOO cheesy and cutesy, but it really is a moment, and the film is full of great scenes like this. (There are a couple that are cheesy/cutesy and don't really add, such as the toddler learing about fireflies. Cute, but we get it, you have a cute daughter, let's move on.)

After watching this film, I'm not going to try to go no impact or anything, but it did shake me up a bit, especially in how I could relate to the wife about some things. We have the same weakness - clothes. She is a designer junkie, and I am far from that. Everything I buy is used or extremely inexpensive. However, I use that as the excuse for purchasing things WAY too often. This documentary made me very aware of how much STUFF I have. It's kind of painful. I need to follow her theory of 'inventory reduction'.
Overall, the doc was good. I learned a lot, and like the Characters. Check it out.

Confessions of a Superhero

Directed by Matthew Ogens, this documentary follows four superhero costume performers in Hollywood, CA. Before I watched it, I imagined it taking the fun and cheesy route, focusing on the fun and playfulness associated with superhero and character culture, and getting to meet and know the people behind the outfits. While we did get to know the people, it was anything but kitschy or silly. The four main characters perform as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Incredible Hulk. It starts fairly light-heartedly, learning about the profession in general from the characters, the street police, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, etc. The most interesting things that I learned are 1) How the officials and performers view the 'job' as being "ambassadors to the community". 2) The laws and rules that have been created to deal with the large community and success of the impersonation business. I don't respect it less than I did before seeing the film, but it really is a glorified version of panhandling, which I find very interesting.

The movie became a very personal look into the lives of all of the main characters, and I really liked all the different ways that the director went about revealing the people behind the masks. Besides filming them on the street, there was gorgeous still photography throughout capturing some of their most human emotions and the hardships of the job.
Often times I am not a fan of still photos, because I feel like it can sometimes hurt the momentum of a piece, but the photos here were stunning and played against the idea of all the tourists capturing photos of them in character. There was also home video of Wonder Woman as a child, in high school, and even her spontaneous trip to Vegas to get married. This footage made you empathize with her completely, and was so relatable that I started getting concerned, like I too could end up in a costume on Hollywood Blvd, because nothing from her past experiences necessarily led directly to this. The doc used footage from a film Superman's mother was in, and also clips from movies and shows the characters had been in. To see such a range of genre and quality added to their likeability and the hardhips the characters face. The filmmaker interviewed characters' parents, significant others, went into their homes, and even went to the spot of pavement on which the Hulk used to sleep at night when he was homeless.

My favorite component were the individual sitdown interviews with each of the characters. Talking heads are typically the least fun thing in doc making, but each setting was different, dynamic, and incredibly appropriate for the character and their lives. Each setting was beautifully framed and shot, and all indoors, like we were finally getting them in off the street and getting to listen to their secrets in private. Personal and portrait documentaries are my favorite by far, and I was really inspired by this movie in the sense that it is a good example that there are never too many ways to learn about someone or too many places to find their stories. I really liked and recommend this documentary.

Power Paths (Yes, it's about energy)

I came across POWER PATHS (2009) by looking through KLRU's new COVE system akin to video online systems like Hulu. I work at Austin's PBS station KLRU so I've already gotten some exprience with COVE and online video distribution in general . Going back on topic, POWER PATHS was on Independent Lens and is a documentary about Native Americans reclaiming their environment and resources and using them to their advantage in a clean, sustainable, and self-profiting way. The Navajo Indians 30 years ago were taken advantage by a coal plant who started destroying the land by surface mining. Eventually, the natural aquifers found on the Indian's land were being dried by the coal slurry that shipped out millions of gallons of their precious water to California. As a threat to their land, their water, and their livelihood, they fight to close the plant and use renewable energy sources to empower their community.

This documentary has many similarities to the documentary I created in this class this semester. One of which is the obvious; it's a documentary about energy. The beginning of the film openned with a discussion on how transmission lines for electricity flowed continuously through the Native American's land but little of the electricity was actually allocated or consumed there (even despite that most of the energy was created there). With this discussion, the film used extensive amounts of B-Roll of transmission lines though it was beautifully shot. I was reminded of the part of the my documentary of the same topic that became stagnate due in part because of the lack of 'revealing' and diversified B-Roll. It got me asking the question: why do we need to see static transmission lines over and over again? Am I making some sort of point by doing so? Nevertheless, the documentary did not dwell on this aspect and actually made me wonder why exactly they started with that sequence instead of a more broad approach that attaches us to the Native Americans and not power lines.

One of the things that made my documentary a little dissimilar to this documentary is the fact that it has many more 'action' or event type scenes - something that puts us into the flowing movements of the narrative. It shows a local Native American rancher surveying his land remembering the way it used to be; where there was water continually flowing, now exists barren and dry dirt. Another scene depicts various protests by local citizens demanding a stop to the pollution from the nearby coal plants. There were I feel an unnecessary amount of sound bits of the protest, which gave a sense of unfairness in terms of the voices we were hearing. As a matter of fact there were very few proponents of coal burning energy; very few as in one person, and he was Native American.

One of the most intriguing parts of the documentary was when they were finally able to close the plant. This naturally shifted to the next Act of the film, which was finding a solution that gave the locals a job and didn't pollute their land and water. It gave me something to look forward to in terms of how they responded to the problem of finding a solution.

The biggest difference between my documentary and POWER PATHS is the fact that this documentary revolves around a community of people. The human element to this documentary gives a greater depth to the story than a documentary without it. It is without a doubt that the next documentary I create will be focusing on individuals involved with a developing and intelligible story. But, don't let that fool you into thinking I don't enjoy creating meaning and narrative the hard way!

Progress report- A bees project.

Five hours before my AA flight back to Taiwan, I’m still sitting in front of iMAC editing the last part of my project. Looking at all the tiny clips hanging up in the timeline, I can’t stop thinking of every moment I spent with the subjects and filming them. It’s a training of my storytelling ability, yet it’s also a journey to reach people and the community that need to be heard in this world. That’s what a journalist should do, and that’s why I’m sitting down here.

I was absent in our last class because I was interviewing with a bees expert. That went pretty well because Simone turned out to be a doctoral student at UT and has a lot of working experiences with native bees in Brazil. Her research topic is solitary bees which means they don’t have a colony and don't produce honey(they don’t have queens). I was so glad that I met her because I learned a lot from her. For example, there are 90% of bees don’t produce honey. A kind of bees love to lick the sweat from human being. However, I know that the more information I got from her, the more dilemmas I would have met when it comes to editing.

There are some weakness of my final project that I could have done better if I went over it again.

At the very first beginning of my work, I was gonna make a bees documentary related to the drought. So basically the interview questions were almost around this topic and I didn’t come up anything else. Both of Joe and Taylor answered the question like that and none of them could be able to “show” me the affect that drought had made. And it wasn’t until the mid of semester that I realized that: 1. Documentary is supposed to document something that is GOING ON, not something has been passed. 2. Because it rained a lot at the end of last year, beekeepers harvest much more honey than last year, so my original idea of bees project looks like a joke at that point.

Also, I should’ve made a clear storyline before I started to do it. We’ve done treatment assignment at the early of this semester but mine had nothing to do with bees whatsoever. Gradually I realized that I can't ask the same questions each time I interviewed with them. The change of mindset worked a little bit when I interviewed with the bees expert, but things are already too late. I can’t start to make my story until I collect all the clips, or the documentary would be so lack of story spine and fragmentary. Even if I have many good close-up shots, story line is what matters to
make a documentary piece completed.

And I was supposed to be prepared myself well enough technically when it comes to making documentary. I’m already spoiled by the convenience and mobility of my photographic camera that I didn’t consider a lot of using Video Camera/tripod/Wireless Mic.

I’ve made many mistakes through all this way that made me frustrated a lot of times. But we’re in school where we’re allowed to make mistakes. Now I know that how much should I prepare before every interview, how to be bold enough to be close to the subject even though they look scary(bees),how to deal with the emotional Final Cut( I hate Apple), and to drag all the files from my SD card when I upload the footages to my computer.

One thing I’m glad about my project is that I made some really good shot in terms of photographic style. I wish I could grab my camera each time I was filming bees, but the video camera and tripod have driven me nuts so there was no way I could take the camera out. I did asked for help several times but it turned out that everyone was busy or they couldn’t make it. It’s ok. I told myself that I could do it since a lot of people doing their project alone too.

It’s a simple documentary piece as the name it is. But it’s my very first time making documentary too. I wish I could have more weeks to do it, or say, I should’ve started to do it weeks ago. But I’ve learned a lot by all the mistakes and experiences. And I made it.

Final Progress Report

When I first came back from China, I was not sure how I was going to put my documentary together. My friend, James, and I had been discussing the kind of themes we wanted to get across in the film and had planned out interview questions together. Still, the interviews with our Chinese subjects usually ended up being sprawling conversations, so I came home with a lot of interview material that I did not understand. After the lengthy process of capturing all the footage and transferring it to a separate hard drive to send to James, I realized there would not be enough time to make full transcripts of, and cut, the Chinese footage for the class. Without James, or some other patient and passionate Chinese speaker, to assist me, I would have to get by with the English language interviews. I watched them, subclipped them, and then watched them again and again. I laid out the interviews in a story and ended up with 40 minutes of solid interviews, which I then whittled down to 10 minutes. I whittled this down further and cut in some footage to illustrate the points being made. I had to rush through all this because James needed something to show to the University of South Carolina Honor’s College, which had given us a great deal of money to do the project.

I ended up with something that was not great. Still, if I had not been rushed I probably would have had that cut around this time instead of a month earlier. The piece was almost all backstory about the characters, but with enough missing to make it confusing. Only one character, James, had a proper arc. The other, Vaughn Anderson, a professional Mixed Martial Artist, was really just a complimentary character. A lot of the footage did not come together in coherent sequences, but was instead nice looking footage that had just been pieced together. Also, you had to wait until the very end to get the goal of the main character. So, yeah… there were problems.

In order to give it a stronger are and make it shorter, I decided to cut Vaughn. I added in material for James and restructured his story to give it a more traditional shape, with early established goals and obstacles, conclusions, the whole nine yards. The only problem was it was pretty boring. James had really enjoyed the first cut, but, when I pointed them out to him, could see the problems the class pointed out to me. When I sent him the transcript of the cut with him only, he was unenthusiastic. He was not rude, but he simply said there was a lot he missed from the old version. When I showed a cut to Diane, she had the same reaction. Really, when I thought about it, I had the same problems. I think I was just tired and wanted to have the structure settled on so bad I was willing to ignore my own doubt. The new version lacked the hook of the original cut’s beginning. Without Vaughn’s differing personality and attitude, James and the film lost some of its edge. Also, without the juxtaposition, some of the interesting notes about James – like his self-doubt – did not fit into the film. Diane suggested taking the original and the new cut and combining their strengths. She took out a piece of paper and helped map out Vaughn’s arc, and gave me ideas of how to more evenly structure their stories.

Getting to your finished product by creating three radically different versions of the story probably would not be the most practical way to go about doing a feature length doc with hundreds of hours of footage. For this project, though, that was exactly what I needed to do. I ended up with a product that I am very satisfied with. Well, the sound mix was not great. Not that my sound was great to begin with, but for all that was fixed, the quality of the interviews was degraded, and those are the most important part. I still have my original sound, and I think I will just use that – warts and all. I am very happy with the end product. I am even happier to be done with it, at least for now. I have to extend my deepest thanks to Diane, Kim, and everybody in the class for their honest criticisms and great suggestions.

By the way, the end title was “More Than Tourists,” though if I might still change it. I asked James to help me think of something else before the screening, but we could not come up with anything. He said he was not dissatisfied with the title, though ideally it would be something “more epic or threatening.”

Inspiring Docs

The last class screening we had before I left for China was Touch the Sound, and right after wards I thought that might play a big part in the aesthetic of my doc. I found their method of visualizing the abstract very interesting, and thought that I might do something similar to get across the concept of Chi.

That did not end up happening. Partly because I am not an experimental guy and the idea of trying to make visual metaphors was embarrassing. I imagined trying to explain through a translator why I was spending all my time filming a blade of grass or a pile of snow instead of the Kung Fu. Another, and really the most important thing, was that I do not know what the sensation of doing Tai Chi feels like. I could ask people, and try to turn that into visuals, but that would be pretty phony. Finally, in the heat-of-the-moment nature of shooting a documentary, I have trouble being intellectual on that level. I can recognize something visually interesting or a heated exchange going on in the moment, but I cannot bring my thinking to that next, abstract level. The main thing I could do, while shooting and doing interviews, was to try and think of the kind of story I wanted to tell, and how I wanted my film to be different from what had already been done on the subject.

Before going over to China, I watched a couple of Kung Fu documentaries on the Internet, including this one. It is not bad, but it represents what I have seen to be true in a lot of Kung Fu documentaries. I am not aware of any that strive to be more than a forgettable hour or a half on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. They are usually surveys of a bunch of different Kung Fu styles and masters that never try to achieve any depth or delve into the personalities of the people involved. I think that is because the surface is so cool. The people are doing interesting, physical things, and they often say philosophical things that seem profound. What else do you want? The problem is that kind of approach is distancing. It creates a general sense of: these are strange foreigners, doing strange foreign things. How exotic.

I wanted to profile people that were recognizably human, with all their flaws and quirks and humor. The documentaries that have real impact on me are often structured around characters and personalities, and that usually deal with obsession. For example: Grizzly Man. When you are dealing with a profound and lifelong obsession, the people and situations involved usually have some degree of absurdity to them. Still, their passion is real, important, and, if presented the right way, relatable. I wanted something that could acknowledge the bizarre elements of the story, but that would ultimately give at least some degree of insight and understanding into why this is important to the people involved.

Dong Kim screenign response: Waltz with Bashir

In class, Waltz with Bashir is introduced as an animated documentary. I have never thought of the film that way before, but after thinking about it, the film has every reason to be a documentary, except that ‘real’ footages are substituted with animated images. Also, it is a very subjective film that flips between past and present to search the missing truth. It deals with the real people and real incident that happened.
Although some characters are fictional, the film basically tells the story from the director’s experience. The protagonist is named Ari, and he is the reflection of the director Ari Folman. The interview of Folman that we watched in class helped me organize my thoughts. He said that he does not care whether it is called a documentary or a fiction film, as long as it is his story. Ari Folman had gone through the Lebanon War himself. Although he did not actually lose memory or anything, he did wanted to let people know of this very real event of massacre by the soldiers, which was slowly being forgotten by the world. The plot of trying to find the missing memory and subjective truth in the film is a symbolism of trying to remember the brutality of war.
However, he knows that he can only tell his version of reality. I loved this piece subjectivity compared to other films and documentaries about war. In the film, Ari’s conversation with Lebanon War Veterans is a way to glue many different people’s versions of reality together and naturally lead to the subjective truth of the director himself.
One important thing about this animation-documentary is that the animation format is used in order to stay away from the objectivity. It holds the soldiers’ point of view, and some random animated moments, such as the vision of a goddess rising from the sea, are used to express the mentality of the people fought in the war. This is why I think that the animation format suits this film perfectly, while I wasn’t so enthusiastic about Chicago 10’s use of animation. In Waltz with Bashir, animation was used to create something that is unable to be expressed in real time movie, such as the subjectively stylized, dream-like visions of characters as well as reconstructing the past event, while in Chicago 10, the animation made the line between objective and subjective reality very vague and thus less persuasive(at least for me).