Week 6: Scott Anderson

I explored the HearHere site and thought it was pretty interesting with the use of audio and drawn pictures served as backstops for the story. One I listened to started off sort of (it seemed) like it was in the middle of the story, but the more I listened and the more I watched, the more interested I became about the little girl who dreamed about being a chef and pharmacist and the older woman who desperately wanted to help her make her dream come true. I also listened to one about how a dating coach found love when she wasn’t looking for it. They were both real stories that were easy to relate to for most listeners.

I thought the HearHere site itself was particularly interesting since I had never seen anything like it. The premise was that you were going to have tell a story about a place in your San Francisco neighborhood that is meaningful to you. You would upload a photo, type your name, zip code and the name of your spot and then you would record your voice as you told the story.

The Bear 71 site was probably the most provoking documentary I’ve seen in awhile — both good and bad. I liked it because they took what would have been probably just another documentary about wildlife and told the story from a bear’s point of view without it coming off as off-putting. For me, the storytelling was off the charts because of the combination of the words and the musical choices. What I didn’t like was that I couldn’t immediately figure out what was happening on the screen. Where was I supposed to click? Was I supposed to click? I went through it another time and sort of moved my cursor around and clicked on the coyotes, elk, deer, cougars and other animals that lived in the area and got more involved (or interactive!) with the site.

I also watched the documentary Black Gold Boom, which told stories of multiple people who were trying to make a living off of the oil industry in North Dakota. The documentary was divided up into chapters and at the end of the chapters, there was a chance for viewer interaction. For example, one was titled “Love, Hate and Everything in Between.” There was a line below that with various oil drops where the viewer could click on the oil drop to learn more about “why some folks love or hate the (oil) boom.” One of those I clicked on was an old man who had the longest/weirdest porkchop sideburns I’d seen in awhile and he launched into this incredibly bad music video as he played the guitar. For me, that sort of killed my interest in the documentary because I couldn’t take anything the documentary-maker had to say anymore, which goes to show that it’s extremely important to carefully choose what stays in and what stays out of projects. Careful editing can spell success or disaster in not just documentaries, but other interactive projects.

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9 comments to Week 6: Scott Anderson

  • Grace

    Scott, I agree with you about the need for careful editing. In fact, that should be the mantra in this age of reality-infused, user-generated content. We should be as concerned with what we should reject as we are with what we should generate. But who wants to kill one’s babies? Personally, I’d rather butcher my own work than have someone else do it. That’s even more painful. But someone has got to do it.

  • kblack7@uoregon.edu

    Scott, I was also very intrigued by the HearHere site as well. I think their choice to present the material in a participatory model was very interesting on the creators part. By allowing the San Francisco citizens to record and store their own stories, they are actively working towards archiving the community they live and work in.

  • jschaub@uoregon.edu

    Hi Scott,
    Bear 71 was fascinating and troubling at the same time. I also agree with you that it easily could have been another National Geographic documentary (which isn’t a bad thing) and kept pretty vanilla. LeAnne took multimedia to a whole new level. However, I wasn’t able to finish watching it because as a 9 month pregnant woman, my sensitivity level is sky high and hearing of Bear 71’s plight and especially with her cubs, I just couldn’t watch. Effective storytelling? Yes. Something that I could wrap my brain around? Yes. High interest? No, not at the moment. Perhaps after I deliver I can watch it, again.

    I also agree with you and with Grace about editing. It can either make or break a story’s flow. And from professional experience, one of my internal, corporate videos I made completely bombed because although I knew that the video wasn’t that good, I didn’t want to edit the crap out of it – mainly because I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the person who was being filmed. Lesson learned!

  • banders3@uoregon.edu

    Jamie: I guess that’s the highest form of flattery that this interactive documentary could receive — that a pregnant woman identified(?) with the bear so much through the unique storytelling and video that she simply could not continue to watch it. That’s something that I would not have probably thought was even possible. So does this mean that it was too good for its own good and that it actually could drive people away? I’m guessing you’re in the minority on this one, but I obviously can’t say for sure. It would be interesting to see how others would take it. For example, I was at a family birthday party this past Sunday and one of my nieces (she’s a fifth-grade student) and I were watching this TV show on Discovery Channel about these people who live in Alaska. There are no stores around so they have to go out and hunt for food. On this particular episode, the people were out hunting a bear. When my niece learned about this, she had an immediate reaction that she didn’t want to watch the show any more because they might kill the bear. I wonder what her reaction would be if she saw Bear 71.

  • Joel

    Scott, what did you think of the interactivity on Bear 71 the second time through? I’m glad you brought up being frustrated by it the first time, because the navigation wasn’t immediately apparently to me either and I’m wondering how other folks felt. Did the interactivity enhance or distract from the purpose of the project? As far as I can tell, the purpose of the project was to ‘question how we see the world through the lens of technology,’ in comparison to the wild world, but I’m not sure whether simultaneously tackling linear narrative and open-world interactivity is the most efficient way to accomplish that goal.

    Presumably, interactivity is available to help us escape the linear format, stepping out of the narration to explore the wild, as well as alternative facts and plot points. This does blur the line between the wild and wired worlds, but on a first viewing, I wasn’t sure why I wanted to do that. I think it’s important to establish purpose and focus for a documentary, but this seemed to be a blend of documentary and performance art installation, so I’m not sure how to understand its purpose and I wonder whether the indeterminate nature of the project starts more hares than it catches. As art, it’s intriguing to explore but too narrative and didactic, and as narrative, it’s too loose and undefined.

    Something tells me I may be overthinking this, but I still think the project ought to have a purpose. Any help/thoughts?

  • kgaboury@uoregon.edu

    I might have given Bear 71 a little too much praise in my first post. After going back and taking a second look, the map kind of reminds me a game I used to play on Atari. I think I might have gotten a little too drawn in by the story at first and my empathy-for-animals receptors overwhelmed my B.S. detectors. While the story is compelling, we have no way of knowing how much of it is fiction, or at least embellished somewhat for the sake of narrative. It’s not like we can ask the bear what happened.
    What the project accomplishes, though, is it brings attention to the issue of humans’ impact on nature. I think it would be difficult to watch it and not think about your actions next time you are in the wilderness. So if the goal was to change people’s attitudes, it did that right.

  • dereky@uoregon.edu

    Kevin,
    I agree with you that Bear 71 had a video game feel to it. I am wondering if that high tech approach was intentional to point out how we have become desensitized as a society.

  • summerh@uoregon.edu

    Grace, I know what you mean about not wanting to kill one’s babies so to speak. Its easy to get attached to one’s own work, especially after putting a lot of time into it. Then again, sometimes after I have spent countless hours editing something I am ready to kill it, or at least let it die. The trick is in knowing when to just let something go. But I also agree, it is more painful to have someone else butcher it.

  • hdemich2@uoregon.edu

    Hah! Good discussion. I am now wondering about the overall impressions going forward of the “game-like” sensation seeking we crave and what we perceive online as dull and old school.

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