Analysis of project update

I have been thinking about my aim to set out and create a version of the participatory documentary and I having been giving it plenty of thought over the course of the morning about how successful or not that has been.

What I haven't yet decided on is whether the narrative I intend to overlay, which really is the synopsis read in a newsreader style by me, adds or detracts from the participatory documentary aim. Plus no matter how hard I try to use a news reader voice it just sounds ridiculous.

One thing that I have really struggled with in this course is the definitions of the genres and sub sets of these genres. It was a very difficult essay for me and I dont think I did it very well.

Even in documentary there are so many academically documented styles and modes as per Lecture 11 I think it was. Putting these frames and fences around something that in the past I wasn't aware of as a simple punter of film watching has changed the way that I look at films forever. I now feel more insightful and armed with understanding about so many more aspects of films now that I am no longer just passively observing or only following a plot and storyline, I now immerse myself in the directors chair and think about what it might be like to be involved from that angle trying to get actors to work with my vision. I look at film and camera techniques used. I can even name some of them! I look at special fx and CGI completely differently and this course has amplified what I learned last trimester in digital animation.

I watched an old fiction classic last night intently, called The Butterfly Effect and was amazed at just how much more I got out of the movie with my new eyes and ears. The film itself is quite powerful graphically and has quite well chosen moderate special fx to convey the plot and emphasise a point which the audience must be involved with to understand. Although many topics were brought in for added viewer interest and shock value the film is largely about a psychology student with an interesting and colourful past who has memory blackouts and his journey to understand the things that have seemingly been lost and his struggle to control those blackouts.

Back to my documentary though, and I think I have got a few parts of different types of documentary style. For instance I believe I am acknowledging the camera and my involvement in shooting the interview section where the band members are talking about completing their profiles. I think I come from a position of argument but maybe I am being persuasive in the positive light I am taking to the bands success. That for me is inevitable because I do want them to be successful but I have tried to shy away from being overtly positive and let the footage tell the story. I believe I have truly stepped away from a position of authority or expertise! My handycam work is shaky when I want it to be dead still and still as a rock when I want the 'Blair Witch' effect.

Something I am doing until now subconsciously is the use of severe fast montage editing. It featured in my own MA1 assignment of me, and I have again gone and chopped up the photo shoot scenes. I think it is just a personal preference or style that I am leaning towards personally, but I disagree with Eisentsteins view in my shots because I don't think I am creating any sort of intellectual contexts just yet!

I have just re read the lecture in a short interlude from this post and discovered that a part of the definition of The Participatory Mode (No 4, Pge 14 lecture week 10) that there are no voice of god commentaries, no unmediated observations etc... so if I write a creative narrative that tells us about the band and about what you are seeing, have I steered off course and off genre? If so, does it matter? And what does it become?

I tell ya, this genre stuff confuses the claptrap out of me! Ayeh Carumbah!