Spoken like a Woman is an interesting look at the role that women have had in broadcasting history with the BBC. From the early days before the second world war and up until today. The sound bites are interesting.
Fearless is a documentary produced by Netflix, exploring the life of bull riders that come from Brazil, to the US to compete in 26 competitions to see who is the best bull rider. This documentary is interesting because, for the most part it is in Portuguese with English subtitles.
In Brasil there is an event Barretoswhere 900,000 people, at the time the documentaries were made, go to watch bull riders compete against each other. Bull riding is a unique sport because a person tries to hold on to a bucking bull as it tries to throw the rider off. The rider gets point for style, but so does the bull. If the bull throws the rider off within eight seconds then the rider gets zero points. If the rider stays on then they can get up to 90 points.
The sport is very dangerous because it’s a small human being, on a big bull. They can get thrown and land on their head and break their neck, trampled, headbutted, and more. They can get their arms or legs caught. They risk injury in a multitude of ways. The paradox is that it lasts for eight seconds. All of that danger and risk, for an activity that lasts a few seconds.
If you look at the stats you can see how often bull riders are thrown off their bulls. It’s impressive to see that people fall from two or more meters onto the ground and often walk away. it’s interesting to watch the helpers get in front of the bull to block its path when the rider is bucked off.
It’s a strange sport because the humans are injured, rather than the bulls. The bulls are fine aftre the competition.
An aspect of the documentaries that I like is that we see that it’s not just that they ride bulls, and that is it. They train. We see a five or so year old child try riding a calf and get thrown several times. “Do you want to ride again?” “yes”. We also see a slightly older girl practice riding on the barrel. “Stay on, don’t let go” as the barrel mounted on a spring goes forwards and backwards, and from side to side.
We also see how the adults train, how they ride the grown up equivalent of a rodeo bull, how they react, how they “dance” to keep their balance and to negate the movements made by the bull to throw them off.
Although the documentary series is called Fearless it explores the riders and how they deal with fear, injury and continue riding. They explore how the riders are confident, until they are injured, and how they recover from the injury and it’s physiological and psychological effects. They use the analogy of broken eggs, and how one or two riders get injured, but seem unphased.
One rider speaks about how he retired, and never once missed bull riding. Another questions whether to retire at the end of the season.
I am familiar with Razeteurs, bull fighting and the Running of the Bulls. I have even witnessed the running of the bulls in a small village. Bull riding is one version I have never really thought about, because in Europe Bullfighting, bull running and Razeteurs are more common. I watched this documentary by fluke, and I like the subject matter.
It explores family, bull riding in the US and Brazil, about family, life as a migrant in the US, with little to no English, and more. It’s a good subject matter. It is well filmed, well edited, with good use of event commentator and bull rider interviews.
My shoes are wet and my socks are wet because today I tried river walking. If a child was to do the same it would be called immature and irrational but when an adult does it then it’s adventure, and trying something new.
My motivation to river walk came from the pandemic, or more precisely from how people behave during a pandemic. When I walked yesterday I had a runner pass right by me and then spit on the ground a few meters ahead of where I would have been going. When I walked through the woods yesterday I could hear groups of people so I avoided walking along the same routes.
That’s why I placed both feet, and the shoes they were in, into the river and walked. I didn’t get that far. In fact I was only able to walk a few dozen meters before finding that the river would have required wading. I wasn’t prepared to do that. We’re not in a heatwave yet.
Although you can’t really see it in the image above grooves have been worn into the rock strata. As a result you shouldn’t spend all of your time looking forward because you’ll be caught out. River walking requires you to look at where you’re placing your feet. In the image below you can see these erosion patterns more clearly.
I’ve walked along the routes so much that now I’m starting to get to know the details. Now I know that the river is beautiful and that if you’re willing to get wet you can see some nice features. There are a few places I need to return to, and document through photography.
This morning I was looking through to see if Thru-hiking had started and to see whether people would still try to thru hike any of the main trails in the US and from what I see most people have not started and those that did have postponed their hikes for now.
As a follow up to this I listened to this episode of the Hiking Thru podcast. It’s about Chris Smead going for a lesser known Thru hike with eleven lenses, seventy five batteries and a monopod to document a hike with a group of people. The hike sounds like an interesting experience. It also makes a nice change from listening to so many news and current affairs programs. A moment to dream.
I will keep exploring. To a large degree I treated today as if there was no pandemic and that was refreshing. I still washed my hands as soon as I got home. I just didn’t stay cooped up indoors without treating myself. Exploration is a treat.
Spy-cam wildlife filmmaking is an interesting discipline. It builds upon the decades of innovation that the documentary film genre has built upon. From the earliest images by the Lumière brothers of the workers at a factory to the development of film editing by Eisenstein and Dziva Vertov demonstrated by “The Man With the Movie Camera to sync sound with the Crystal sound system used by Jean Rouch for Chronique d’un été.
The BBC is seen as the leading example of high quality television programming and this has been the case for decades. The Natural History Unit is responsible for some of the best wildlife documentary films and series and with good reason. They adopt the latest technology, hire crews for months or even years at a time, to capture nature’s spectacle and beauty, and bring it to living rooms around the world.
Sensory: BBC Wildlife Director John Downer & the technology of ‘spy-cam’ filmmaking from Getty Images on Vimeo.
This attention to detail and this dedication to getting the best images has resulted in some of the best looking documentaries around. the Blue Planet Series, the Planet Earth series, Life and others have provided people with what I like to call a video encyclopaedia of the natural world.
The technological innovation that we see in the video above demonstrates how animals and behaviour that we had seen through a tele-lens can now be seen up close and with as natural a behaviour as possible. Almost every book I have read about the documentary genre speaks about capturing life with as little alteration of natural behaviour as possible. This technology is making that wish a more realistic goal.