Author: jhernand

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.

Johanna Under The Ice – NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.

Sounds of wind lead the opening image in the Ian Derry’s video about Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad, in a beautifully shot film under four minutes.

I had only skimmed the summary on Vimeo before clicking play, so I had no idea what to expect: something about cold-water treatment after a bicycle accident. But as I watch, I kind of felt like gasping for air as I watched the protagonist hold her breath in ice cold water, literally.

What struck me the most about the short film, however, was the use of color or lack there of.

At the start, the viewer sees mostly wide shots with Nordblad walking on snow from a considerable distance to the camera. Everything looks black and white: dark trees contrasting bright snow.

A medium shot of her head and shoulders and a super-tight shot of her eyes briefly reveal other colors, but I feel the simple color choices accentuate the coldness the viewer will soon feel from the images.

The viewer hears Nordblad explain she almost lost her leg after an accident before starting cold-water treatment. That’s while you see her a few shots of her using a metal saw to cut into ice below her feet.

Just after 1:10 in the film, she dives into a lake, without any oxygen tanks and wearing a single large flipper that fits here two feet — sort of like a mermaid.

The underwater scenes add the blue to the film. It appears that the bright snow above the ice serves is the only source of light for the underwater camera as the viewer watches her swim while holding a single breath.

Several underwater shots are again taken at significant length away from Nordblad as the light reflect from her goggles. It makes it look like her eyes have lit up in the dark cold water.

However, my favorite moment comes when she exhales a bit releasing several bubbles that get trapped under ice.

When she returns to the surface, you again see the tan color of her face, and bits of blue appear in the sky. Among the final sounds you’ll hear are her breaths, a symbolic contrast to the wind at the start of the film.

Valsa das Máquinas, Paramount Têxteis from grafikonstruct on Vimeo.

Music and detail shots are the name of the game in Valsa das Maquinas, a 1.5 minute video that flies by the first time you watch it.

Made by Grafikonstruct, a multiplatform studio in Brazilian, the video syncs an original waltz composed by Lucas Lima as the viewers sees really cool images of a textile plant. Musical notes are precisely edited to the movement of machine parts that you can’t help but notice the intentionality of the musical composition.

Within the first three seconds, you’ll hear the quick strikes of piano keys match the percussion-like movements of a machine. As you hear the introduction of the full compliment of string instruments at 15 seconds, you’ll see a the textile plant’s variety of threads and strings dance back and forth.

I counted 25 shots for the 1:31 second video. All the cuts between shots are fast without any transitions.

Most of the details in each shot have shallow depths of field that are subtle, and you have to really pay attention to see what’s out of focus in each shot. That’s because the producers do a good job of making the eye focus on what’s important in each image. The machines appear to be under soft lighting. However, there are some shots with shallow depths of field, such as in the 53^rd second.

The camera stays motionless in all but one of the shots as the producers let the parts do the movement. It’s only until the 23rd second, where you’ll notice a huge roll of thread unwinds, can one pick up slow camera movement to the left that must have been shot from a mounted position or the movement created in post production.

The only natural sound you’ll hear comes at the end of the video. That’s when the waltz ends and the viewers hear the sound of the last machine and see final textile product made by Collezione Paramount.

All in all, it’s simplicity and synchronization makes the experience fun to watch.

And by the way, if you’re Portuguese is not up to date, the video’s translation means “Machine’s Waltz.” My headline’s translation: Who knew machines can waltz?

Born to be Mild from Aeon Video on Vimeo.

Andy Oxley’s “Born to Be Mild” provides plenty of identifiable examples of visual language for a documentary newbie like me. The 15-minute film is fun to view, and also funny because of Oxley’s five characters, all men who are proudly dull, and anything but ordinary.

I viewed seven or eight different short documentaries for this assignment, but I knew from the get-go the first film would be my subject. Between the montages, shot compositions, interview techniques, voiceover narration, music, ambient sound and more, Oxley and crew made it difficult for me to choose what to explore and blog about.

One thing I found in common with all five characters: Oxley places them in shots symbolic to their hobbies during their indirect interview. The man (at 6:35) who collects thousands of milk bottles – but he doesn’t drink the baby nourishment – is placed in front of his collection site. Another man (at 9:09) who collects bricks. In the shot, he sits in his garden where he describes how his collection has frustrated his wife.

Peter Willis is a Dull Man of the Year nominee for the Dull Men’s Club, and my favorite character. He’s interviewed (at 4:31) while sitting on a chair in the lower left third a wide shot on a grassy lot by a street. A sharp red mailbox in the distant right upper third of the frame next to a tree.

Oxley introduces Willis (beginning at 3:45) first with tight shots of his sandals and socks before a montage of medium shots that show the dull man taking photographs of red British mail boxes. Meanwhile the viewer hears music reminiscent of what you may hear in an old-school elevator.

His mission in life: get a snapshot of every single unique letter box. But he acknowledges he’s taken only about 2,500 photographs of the roughly 115,000. However, he’s a proud, card carrying member of the Letter Box Study Group, and membership has its privileges.

To accentuate that membership, Oxley creates (at 5:00) a very tight shot of Willis’ hand holding his one-year membership card. The card awards him access to the club’s database of all mail box locations.

“With the help of my son,” Willis says, “I have been able to get those references into my GPS unit, and we set it so it would give me an alarm, a little ding-a-ling warning, when I approach a post box.”

Meanwhile the viewer sees a montage of shots, including tight shot of the side Willis head inside moving car while he hunts for his prey. Another close-up of his GPS unit in the console of his car confirms to the viewer of the device’s importance.

“I rarely leave home without it,” he says with his eyes closed in a tight shot of his head with a blurry red mailbox in the background.

The overall message Oxley delivers is that these men enjoy the very slow and non-complicated aspects of life. Forget cell phones, fancy cars, traveling to exotic places and overall busy lives, Dull Men’s Club members say.

“I like to take in as much of where I’m going or what’s in front of me as I can,” Willis said.

Is the Dull Men’s Club a movement?

“No,” said one of the characters. “It’s not a movement. We like to stay put.”

Tony Hernandez
MMJ Foundations