Livery Documentary

It is done!
Unfortunately, our internet is too slow to post it, so it will A) be posted when the internet is being reasonable again or B) it will be burnt to DVD

Video Interviews

With RACHEL CANNON

Documentary Review No. 1: "WWII in HD" and "Straight Outta L.A."

 

WWII in HD:

You would think that after all the numerous movies, television shows, documentaries, plays and songs about World War II (or any war for that matter), the subject would become clichéed. This series of documentaries does exactly the opposite. With nearly all the footage in colour, or colourized, there is already the potential for something great here. Both misters Lumiere and Ginsberg should be commended for this phenomenal achievement as there is no loss of quality throughout the superior run-time. I like to think that I am fairly well acquainted with war documentaries, but I had not seen anything like this before -- the colour and the directing brought about a whole new experience. Where many documentaries approach their respective subjects as if it were reading a textbook, this approached various aspects of the war from a HUMAN standpoint. 

The entire series explains the war through the stories of twelve very different individuals. By telling the story of each individual from before the war to after, we are able to connect with the individuals themselves and not have to find our own way to connect with raw footage which is almost very irrelevant to us from a human standpoint. Just showing a beach littered with bodies is not nearly as powerful an experience as following one person from before the war and how all led up to that beach and THEN what he felt upon seeing it. NOW we are forced to connect and we realize the significance of the footage. The amount of casualties sustained by any nation during the war is basically incomprehensible.

Here is another area where many war documentaries lose their audiences: casualties. The ultimate human experience drawn from the war is not the damage the war did to buildings, nations, international relations or the environment: it is how many people lost their lives during the war. I firmly believe the human mind is not actually capable of processing large numbers. Imagine one individual apple. Now imagine two INDIVIDUAL apples, not a group of two. Keep going and you will soon find out that it is very difficult to think of eight apples, each individual. We easily group them so there is less to manage. Now imagine 60 Million individuals who were killed in the war. To imagine 60 million anything is virtually impossible, so throwing these statistics at an audience can be utterly bewildering. WWII in HD was able to avoid this and evoke an even greater response by telling and showing what certain individuals saw and experienced. To hear the lead-up to that scene on the beach and finally see it and know how a certain person felt upon seeing it is far more powerful than a disembodied voice telling you that 60 million people died.

Several tools were cleverly used in this documentary, one of which is sound. Music is a key factor in any film, but most footage taken during the war was not recorded with sound. The sound artists who found or recorded these sounds also deserve a round of applause, as they provide the other half of the final product (other than what can be seen of course). Another tool that is used is the rapid flashing of images or snippets of videos when the action gets intense. This is an effective way to signify that all of what was going on at the time was too difficult for the people who were actually there to be aware of.

Overall I must say I was very surprised at the quality of this documentary. It had the ability to send chills down the spine of a Canadian adolescent who has never had to suffer the implications of war, and has grown up with violent movies with people dying left right and centre. This was a major wake up call for me to remember exactly how much a human life is worth.

My one regret is that we did not get to finish this segment in class.

Straight Outta L.A.

I have to be frank with you -- I dislike football. In fact, I hate football. . . Actually, I do anything I can to avoid watching sports. To give you the reason why would be a whole documentary in itself. When I heard we were going to watch a documentary on football, my heart sank and I was thinking, "great, what the heck am I going to write about this?" Well here goes:

I was absolutely captivated by this documentary! I had expected it to comprise of football players on a spiel about ol' times and various strategies they pulled off in their career. I could not be any further from the truth. Football was only half of the focus of the documentary. A good portion was about the music industry in California and how NWA became so tied to the LA Raiders . . . through clothes! (or as they say in da hood, "gear") 

It is a very bizarre story now that I think about it, but a very powerful one as thousands of miles away, in little Goderich, students were not allowed to wear Raiders clothes to school. Every tiny piece of information in that documentary was new to me. I'll be honest, I had never even heard of NWA. 

As I said, the material covered in the documentary was powerful in itself, but the manner it was presented was astounding. I had never seen a documentary presented like that before. Not that WWII in HD was bad, but the style is so incredibly different that you would be surprised both can be classified as a "documentary."

The main difference in the style is that here, the narrator actually presents himself in the production. This only makes sense because the narrator (Ice Cube) was the focus of the story regardless. Many people think that this is arrogant, but I think the best way to tell your story is to tell it yourself, so who better to tell the story of NWA, the Raiders and how tied they became than a member of NWA with help from people associated with the Raiders?

By the end of it, I had a better understanding of NWA, the music industry on the West Coast and how it differed from the East coast, the Raiders, Black culture in L.A., and Football itself. I went home and almost felt inclined to watch a football game, but we don't get those channels on our TV. I did, however, youtube NWA. Even though I am not a huge fan, their story and their message are very significant as they were basically a huge turning point in the American music industry. 

The best part -- no one died.

Documentary Review #2

In a typical fashion, I have decided to post my second documentary review FIRST. I decided I ought to find a documentary that I found both interesting AND useful to other things I was already doing. I stumbled across a documentary about the life of Beethoven which bears quite a bit of significance to me at the moment because I am learning one of his piano sonatas for my exam in June.

I was very curious to watch this documentary from a critic's point of view because making a three-hour miniseries about the life of a composer would be very difficult. I suppose I have a bit of a bias because I would find the material interesting to some extent, but I shall try to highlight aspects that nearly anyone would find interesting in both material and method in which the documentary was made.
The documentary is presented as a three-part miniseries by the BBC.  With the potential to be very boring, a docu-drama was nearly unavoidable as it spares endless narration. That is not to say there was no narration, but it was used tastefully, and sparingly.

This brings me to the narrator himself. I was very glad that the narrator knew what he was talking about as he was obviously a pianist -- he would explain and highlight certain musical traits of Beethoven's at the piano. Another draw here is the fact that he is "beautiful" and British (I would like to point out that is extremely rare in a pianist). Short scenes showing the narrator at his piano really help connect the story and point out the subtleties one might miss that were not included in the re-enactments as they were solely based on letters, diaries and other accounts. Because the creators had access to these documents, they were able to include "interviews" of the historical figures, each actor knowing precisely how his or her character would have acted and felt.

Another draw throughout the documentary was the actor who played Beethoven. It was excellent acting and I must congratulate both the actor and the makeup department as the same actor gave a completely convincing performance both when Beethoven was 19 all the way to when he was an old man.

For the most part, the directing was SUPERB! Needless to say, all the music was Beethoven's, but the director found the perfect way to make the scene and the music fit together, whether it be a dainty carriage ride into town or when Beethoven's nephew goes to a forest to shoot himself. All the shots were cleverly thought ought and the lighting was always well designed. There are certain dramatic parts where tools such as rapid shots of various things are used. An example of which is when Beethoven writes a symphony that sums up his transition from a despairing past life to the new, joyful life he has created for himself. Here we see one of these "video montages" as the music builds, visually illustrating this transition and greatly amplifying the significance of this point in Beethoven's life.

After seeing the whole production, I had to turn off the computer, sit back, close my eyes and completely relax myself. It was a new experience for me to be FORCED by a video to reflect on what I had just witnessed. I do not think it was the sheer length of the documentary that caused me to connect so much with the story, or perhaps Beethoven himself, but it is due to the power of the story  which is truly magnetic. While sitting in my own reflective bubble, I looked back on all that I had felt. At first I was fairly impartial as a third party watching in on this very old story, but by the end, it was as though I was there -- I had to hold back tears at Beethoven's death scene to avoid embarrassment here in the library. I believe that the directing, acting, accurateness to the story and, above all, the music is responsible for pulling the audience into the story itself.


I went home and played my piano sonata last night. It was as though I had seen it through a whole new set of eyes. Knowing what was going on in Beethoven's life at the time he wrote it caused the music to suddenly make sense.