Upstate Purgatory (2016) from Lee Phillips on Vimeo.
The 19-minute documentary Upstate Purgatory uses a noticeable amount of slow motion as Lee Phillips tells the story of four inmates in the Albany County Jail in New York. According make to ShortoftheWeek, Phillips made this documentary using footage that didn’t the cut in a much larger, two-part series that first aired in Britain.
I’m choosing to write about slow motion because as a new student to documentaries, I noticed that Phillips used a lot of the effect to tell the inmate stories. I’ve mostly thought of slow motion as a way to see detail in something that moves too fast for the naked eye, such as a bullet leaving its gun or a large explosion as a hero slowly walks away in a Hollywood movie.
In Upstate Purgatory, using slow motion with a voice-over the images made me feel, in most cases, as if I was inside the mind of the inmate. My case for this argument begins at the 5:41 mark as the viewer listens to Lorenzo, a gang member who admits to killing people.
The beginning of the sequences begins with positive motion in the frame as Phillips pushes the camera toward a gated jail door with a deputy behind. The deputy unlocks the door in slow motion and opens it toward the camera. Meanwhile, the camera moves around the door and toward the deputy’s hand.
It almost feels dreamlike as you begin hear Lorenzo’s voice. The inmate describes what he feels as he smells blood and the rush he feels. Phillips cuts to an interview scene with a medium shot of Lorenzo left of the center screen.
The lighting creates a deep shadow on the camera side of his face, and I believe there may be a light pointed toward the wall behind him. Phillips uses a narrow depth of field to blur the background. It’s the only shot played with a normal speed.
Phillips then cuts to a tight shot of Lorenzo’s face, though you can tell it’s a different background because he’s shirtless.
In slow motion, he appears to be spinning slowly with a blank gaze into nothing, occasionally staring directly into the camera. You can tell he’s spinning by the occasional moving shadow on the wall behind him.
The slow motion made me almost believe that’s the face he made while killing the other human being. It’s chilling every time I watch.
The viewer hears him describe a conversation he had with a dying man. Phillips cuts back to the interview shot where you see Lorenzo, who says he remembers telling his victim to “Just let it go. I’ve over man. Just let it go. ”
He cuts back to a super tight shot of Lorenzo’s eyes, a tattooed tear drop under his left eye while he describes the body turning into a shell. Great detail.
He cuts back and says he can tell when he takes away a soul. “And then that’s it.”
Another cut to a tight shot of Lorenzo’s fingers intertwined on his lap for a few seconds before cutting back to the interview shot. The killer attempts to justify to the viewer that he never hurt anyone that wasn’t trying to hurt him or who wasn’t in the “lifestyle.”
I love this video. It is different than some videos I watched before about the prisoner. Phillip did such a great job let them talk about their stories, a normal story as a normal person. Besides the slow-mo, I enjoyed the drone shots at the beginning, a different angle to demonstrate the jail and prisoners in yellow jumpsuit.