Dickie Landry: New York Stories on Nowness.com
From our discussion in Reporting Story, I have been thinking a lot about how we can visually represent the past. Thinking about that, I came across this piece, which successfully utilized photographs as visual aid while discussing past events.
The film utilizes a range of types of photographs and also panned across the images, which supported an active feeling to the piece, helping to keeping the viewer absorbed. In contrast, I noticed how they chose to have some of the current camera shots seem almost like a photo, specifically when showing his paintings. I thought this was a choice to help support connecting the still and moving images and felt that it helped to successfully weave together the old and the new aspects of the story. Another method used for joining the old and new included strategically placing photos to align with current footage so that they felt seamless. An example of this was the shot of him in a gallery and then showed him currently playing the saxophone in a gallery. In this case, I was not sure if this was the same place but it was a nice transition and felt a bit like the photo was coming to life. Lastly, I really enjoyed the use of slow motion with him dancing, slowing this down allowed time to connect with the character.
I really like the idea of “photos coming to life” through re-visiting old places. The music was really well done in this piece as well, and didn’t overpower his voice while complimenting the subject matter. It was really striking that he had actual ash from his apartment after 9/11 – that was a really compelling visual that really set the tone for the piece, and added variety to the older materials since not everything was photographic.
Another thing that I think helped this piece, along with the way the filmmaker brought the photos to life as you and Lauren pointed out, was the amount of active interviews that were done in this piece. When we are seeing the montage of photographs, we are also seeing the character standing in front of the wall of photographs, as if he is absorbing the information at the same time as the audience.