Month: March 2017

First Ladyland from MEL Films on Vimeo.

How often is a First Lady of the United State born abroad?

You might be surprised to know that Melania Trump is not the first. Born in London, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams married the country’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams. But I digress.

David Freid’s First Ladyland takes the rare opportunity to profile the native country of a foreign-born American First Lady. He captures the town of Sevnica, Slovania as residents do what they can to take pride in their most famous daughter, and make a little money from it. And that’s despite learning that the First Lady’s objects as the viewer learns late in the film.

This film and Election Night from my previous blog post are complete opposites ways for bearing witness. First Ladyland doesn’t stick to a single setting like in Election Night’s bar. And while Election Night’s characters tell their thought about Trump, First Ladyland’s people show what they think through their actions.

Interviews are the backbone of the documentary as Freid speaks to a wide variety of residents and leaders: the mayor, the rotary president, a castle manager, a museum curator, a tour guide in an empty bus who cracks jokes, and a balloon artist who makes a Donald Trump balloon with an interesting nose. He weaves their stories through parallel editing as he captures their particular specialty, such as the Olympian hammer thrower, or the

In his arsenal, Freid uses a drone to capture some of the documentary’s most compelling images. At around 2:37, the mayor of Svencia(?) shows an old aerial photo of the city, and a few scenes later ??? uses a drown to bring that picture, with a train beautifully entering the frame from the left.

I feel the best drone shot starts showing the manager of Sevnica’s castle waving at the camera in a mideum shot at 10:45. Suddenly the the camera flies, keeping the man in the middle of the frame. He turns to walk away as the push out speeds up to show the full castle and the large mountain. It’s a very nice wide shot.

It’s a fun film to watch. By the end, I felt like I wouldn’t mind visiting Sevnica at all. Freid showed, in the most positive way, a colorful town full of hopeful people eager to grow and make a little dough.

 

Election Night from Ryan Scafuro on Vimeo.

Talk about bearing witness. I chose Election Night because of the topic, and the discussions we’ve had in class about the political climate.

Ryan Scafuro, a former cinematographer for The Daily Show and now on Samantha B’s Comedy Central show, kept it fairly objective as he captured inside a bar people’s reaction to the Nov. 8, 2016 general election and the early morning after in London.

I say “fairly” because most characters were Hillary Clinton supporters, but I don’t get the sense he had too many options to find Donald Trump fans. Still, I never felt like he was leaning pulling for one side or the other.

He also smartly returned to the same characters to get their perspective throughout the night, one man getting visibly drunker and slurring. I feel the peak of the story’s arc comes from a fist fight he captured as tensions came to a boil.

For technical aspects, I kept thinking about the challenges he must have faced with lighting. It seemed like a dark bar. The images were often a bit grainy/noisy, which made me think he must have had his ISO at higher levels.

There were few establishing shots, and most were either tight shots of detail or medium shots of people and interviews.

He compressed time with lots of detail shots of draft beer pouring into glasses and shot glasses filling with liquor. He also cut away often to clips of news anchors discussing various state outcomes to jump time. He caught one guy passing out, symbolizing the long night (or maybe a true drunk slumber).

The piece feels like it could easily be published in a news website. All in all, I’m walking away feeling that similar scenes in tens of thousands of bars played out that night like it did in London.

One of the best hooks and opening scenes that I’ve seen yet can be found in Pickle.

Talk about an unanswered question(s): What the what? A fish that can’t swim? And what did he say about a sponge?

It sets the tone for Amy Nicholson’s fourth documentary published last November on the New York Times’ Op-Doc page. It’s got drama, lots of death, lots of love and lots of laughs. Nicholson interviews her parents at their home in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. Simply, the film is about the couple’s relationship with animals, no matter the cost and ultimate demise.

In an interview-style film, Nicholson questions her parents separately and then together using the same backdrop. As they tell stories about any of their many animals, she cuts back and forth between the individual interviews, and then sometimes includes both in the same shot.

I know we’re taught to minimize talking heads, however because her parents are so entertaining to watch and listen, I guess this is good exception to the norm.

The best scene and sequence: The tale of the four geese from about 4:21 to 6:00.

Dad suddenly remembers he forgot they once had geese. Nicholson cuts to the couple walking away from the camera in a wide shot of a muddy field with their dog. Mom’s carrying a shovel.

Meanwhile, dad’s voice explains he’s always wanted a pair of geese that look like the goose in Mother Goose Rhymes: plump and fat. Nicholson cuts back to the couple, this time facing the camera walking along a trail with solemn faces. Dad’s carrying a box with the Downy logo.

He found two geese. Another two somehow showed up. Nicholson uses animation to visually portray the fate of three of his four geese (An otter? Really?). As they tell the story, the animation is cut between tight shots of the shovel digging a square hole.

As soon as mom says, now we’re down to one goose, Nicholson cuts to dad bending down and gently placing the box in the ground. Mom tosses yellow bird feed over the box in a tight shot of her hand, as if it’s one last meal before the goose visits that eternal pond in the sky.

Nicholson cuts to another wide shot that suddenly shows a horn player belting out Taps, the song traditionally played during military funerals. So. Funny. The final seen shows the one remaining plump goose, hobbling away from the camera as Taps ends.

The whole sequence is a good mix of interview and cinema vérité styles.

And don’t worry, those unanswered questions will be fulfilled. Be prepared to chuckle.

I found another Nat Geo gem. This video does a really great job of documenting how the Middle East has changed in good and bad ways over the past 60-years.

The best part is the video starts from the perspective of a doctor, talking about going to the Middle East and his mission to take as many pictures as possible. This is a noble mission that I’m sure most of us have attempted, but Dr. Colbert Held took over 20,000 photos of the middle east over the span of those six decades.

After an awesome set-up, the video then goes on to profiles about people from all over the Middle East talking about how their countries have changed for better or worse. Confession: I really like the part about Kuwait. It’s pretty spot-on.

This video is nothing like the last Nat Geo pick, though. It’s heavy is stock footage, info graphs, maps and graphics. I think it was done in a tasteful way and set a good example of how to tell stories when your only footage is the interview. Still, the segments didn’t rely heavily on the interview footage, but made good use of effects and drawings.

It also does a really good job of staying on topic while provide so many different perspectives. It was cut in an engaging way because the stories were so diverse.