Day one of editing has finished and I’ve spent the last two hours resting and relaxing. The editing is quite interesting. We’ve got an interview with someone who was considered as hottest single in the world two or three weeks ago.
The documentary is about myspace and it’s effect on the music industry. It’s interesting because we have at least ten interviews, that’s ten points of view, some musical, others more ITish and yet more from the ordinary public.
Three segments have been assembled and we have a few more to work on. The duration is only five minutes so far but will progress tomorrow.
The rough cut needs to be done by thursday to give an additional week for gathering extra shots and cleaning everything up.
I need to make time for the editing of the multicamera project.
There are about nine days left before the deadline and I’m up to revision five of my dissertation and I’m feeling fairly happy about it. i’ve spent two days working off the printed copy before transferring these changes back to the electronic version. I’ve got almost everything I wanted to do done for today. The next step is to get all the graphics, tables and the bibliography in order. In this detail alone I may expect to spend two or three hours if things go well.
I’m happy to have got this far as I can still change anything that i feel really needs changing. Tomorrow I may attempt a smooth read, making sure that everything is as it should be.
There are many things I have done in the past but having a barbeque at five am whilst the birds are tweeting and the sun is rising is not within my normal realm of experiences. It was nice, felt more like the end of a festival night than anything else.
The party took place at a friend’s place along the Metropolitan line. We arrived at about 7 pm and that moment everything about the party was normal, all the usual features, barbeques, people, drinks and more. Not that many people ate much at the beginning of the night, preferring to socialise instead.
At the end of the night when most people were responsibly going to bed we decided to have a barbeque. It was a mission at first. We had to find out how to open the garden door. It had been locked therefore we could not go out through one door and had to get another one. After this, we had to struggle to find the fire lighting blocks. Finally, we lit the blocks and now it was time to wait for the fire to be warm enough.
By this point, the birds were tweeting more and more excitedly as the sun was rising. As the blue of the sky started to appear our fire was warm enough for the steaks. It took a little time to cook with improvised tools. The food was finally ready and those steaks were good. It doesn’t end there
A popular phrase was “there’s plenty of meat left in the fridge”, resulting in some turkey being fetched and cooked. The pieces were thicker so aluminium helped speed up the cooking process Once we had eaten this it was time for bed for my friends whilst I decided to go home on the tube.
There was just one problem, the tube station was closed and there was no indication of when it’d open. You can imagine my joy at the thought of waiting for them to open. It didn’t matter though, I walked back. It was actually a nice walk. No one in the streets except the occasional post worker. The air was nice, felt like a proper summer morning.
Finally, I was home, having no special need to go to sleep quite yet I stayed up for a little longer. By around 8 am I was asleep. It had been an interesting night.
My dissertation had been finished and ready to print since yesterday afternoon but it’s today that i finally printed out the entire document for handing in to the university for assesment. it’s 10,800 words for some of the most highly produced work I have ever done. It feels good to have handed it in and never to have to worry about it.
Many of the others have handed in the work and it’s going to be celebrated tomorrow although the prospect of spending my first real day of freedom hung over does not appeal to me therefore I’m planning on not drinking.
Now what to do with all this time I’ve got. Find a place to live, find a place to work and more. Everything is there, absolute freedom to do anything at any time i want now.
Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.
No Voice Over
The documentary has no voice over because it’s a silent film. You get intertitles instead that explain what you’re seeing. For many decades the documentary genre existed hand in hand with anthropolgy, the idea that the documentary could be used to document old ways of life, fascets of life and more. Nanook of the North was an early experiment
The Setback
At first Robert Flaherty filmed when he had time during an expedition. He would take the free time he had to document the lives of the Inuit. Eventually, the rushes burned due to a fire. He had shot 70,000 feet of film, almost twelve hours of 35 mm film. Hee was left with just the edit print. He showed it around before deciding that he didn’t like it, so he reshot Nanook of the North. (source: A New History of Documentary film, Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane, p12, 2005)
The content
Nanook of the north is a series of static shots that show an inuit family living their lives. We see them at a trading post, discovering the gramophone tasting it and more. We read about the children enjoying some sweets, to excess, and then taking castor oil, and smiling. We also see a seal hunt, a walrus hunt and the trapping of a fox, among other scenes. We see some traditional forms of doing these various activities.
At the start of the documentary there is an amusing moment where the Kayak comes to shore, and you see the entire family climb out of it, including a dog.
If not for Nannok of the North then such a scene would be read or heard about, but never seen.
The Interior Igloo scene
Nanook of the North did some controversy because it was seen as setup, as not really illustrating inuit life, especially the igloo scene. It’s interessting to see how clear ice was used as a window, with the adding of a block of snow as a reflector to get more light inside. I mention this because at least two or three times we see scenes that are supposed to happen within the iglood.
Due to how cramped an igloo is, and due to the lack of light, and film stock of the time, it would have been impossible to film within the igloo, so they faked it, outdoors. It illustrates the morning ritual. At one point we read, and see, the wife chewing a shoe, to defrost it in the morning, due to the cold night freezing it over. If the Igloo scene had not been faked outdoors, then the interior layout of an igloo would have been lost. By taking a small liberty we preserve history.
Watchability
Although the film is 101 years old, at the time of the writing of this post it is still easy to watch today, and it is pleasant. It shows various moments of inuit life, without being boring. At moments it even feels more like a home video than a documentary. I found myself thinking that anyone with a family could watch it and enjoy it. It has survived the test of time.
The Man With the Movie Camera
For historical context, the Man with the Movie Camera would be shot seven years later, in 1929.
The Digital Age
One of the luxuries of the Digital Age is that many of these films have been digitised, and in so doing they have been made easier to access. When I was reading about these documentaries I had to imagine them. I had to rely on frames of the film and descriptions. Now with a quick Google or other search we can find and watch these documentaries. They may be old, and they may be part of history, but students of the genre don’t need to search through university libraries to find VHS copies of old films like I did. Within seconds you can find content that took me years, or even decades to find. Nanook of the North is a key film, so to understand documentary we must watch it.
Years ago I walked around Herculaneum and was impressed by how well preserved it was. I could see wood, plaster and more. You could see how the rooms looked. It is much smaller than Pompei but it is still worth visiting
Video is one of those mediums that is great because it captures several moments and amalgamates them into a sequence. Those moments are with the voices and sounds, the excitement, and more. It’s too much information for most and that’s why video is a hard medium to use at parties.
The more impersonal a video the better it works, within the realms of you being at the event with your friends.
In contrast, photography is far better accepted. People have been using for photographs since before they comprehended what that box with a big piece of glass actually does. As a result, they were desensitized to being photographed. There are no objections and by the time they realize you’ve taken their picture objection is futile.
With video, you point the camera and watch from a distance. It’s not because you’re a stalker or a voyeur but rather because that is the nature of cinéma verité – Kino Glaz.
How can someone be comfortable when they know that what you’re doing is getting a precise recording of both their conversation and expressions. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable.
That’s why the camera points up as soon as people realise they are being filmed. it’s my signal that I know that they don’t want to be filmed anymore and I move on. Over time people are desensitised to this “invasion” of privacy and there are occasional video lovers. Theatrical people are one example.
During the last two years of High school every night, I would go down and shoot their theatre performances and they’d buy the tape from me. of course, I almost got in trouble with their lecturer but I was not breaching copyright. I was providing them with a visual record of their activities.
Performers also enjoy having copies of their work. Ingyama a few years ago, Anarachic hand and of course last year’s first-year music students. It’s a way for them to show the world what they have produced. Sometimes it’s not good so they prefer to forget about it but when it’s good they’re happy and post it on their websites, whether myspace or specific domain names.
The World Wide Web and the network of networks are not ready for the proper sharing of video at the moment. It’s fine for three or four-minute segments but any longer and you’ll find your audience disappearing. That’s because internet service providers aren’t always giving their customers enough bandwidth. In other cases, it’s just that it’s boring.
The Silent Disco was really well received within a small community in part because it’s anonymous but also because it’s made up of good memories for them. it’s good memories for me too by the way.
My collection of undercroft pictures ended in October and I want it to continue. we’re in March now.
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