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Posts Tagged ‘record breaking’

  1. The Record Breaker

    November 12, 2013 by kblack7@uoregon.edu

    The Record Breaker from Brian McGinn on Vimeo.

    Wow. Where do I even begin? First off, this is one of the funnier videos I have seen in a while. Secondly, this man seems like he lives one of the greatest life’s for one simple reason: he is doing exactly what he wants to do. Ashrita Furman has set almost 400 Guinness World Records and has become the man with the most world records of all time. This video, The Record Breaker is a documentary short of Ashrita’s life as he is training to set a new record for climbing Machu Picchu on stilts. This film has been the Winner of the Vimeo Audience Award at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and Jury Prizes at the 2012 Palm Springs International ShortsFest and the 2013 New Orleans Film Festival.

    The reason that this film has won so much acclaim is rather easy to see. It is a simple story with a complex character. Filmmaker Brian McGinn has brought to the screen one of the funniest and light hearted documentary pieces I have seen in a while. The two-camera interview’s with the main character and his mother and father were lit very well, with the shadow side of their faces towards the cameras, and the close-up and extreme close-up shots were framed very similarly to how we chose to frame Allyson in our interview set-up. Also, the use of detail shots in this piece is what I think makes it so strong, which helps the viewers see the action up close. Here we have a really interesting character and the filmmaker did a wonderful job of letting the camera capture the moments that truly showed us how happy and content this man is with his life. I was curious after watching this, how much time did McGinn actually share with this man in order to get all of this footage?

     


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