OT: Our Town OT: Our Town OT: Our Town

                OT is an interesting documentary because it is a very unexpected subject.  I’m pretty sure the filming started taking place after the fact that it is well established that the school is going to be doing this play.   The film combines sit down interviews with active interviews with stock footage from an Our Town televised play.  It explores the social dynamics of life in theater and at home.  One of the things that the film tries to do, as some of the students state, is that it tries to break the stereotypes that has been established around Compton.   

                One of the great things of this film is the uncertainty and the payoff in the end. I really can’t tell if things are going to work out in the end.  Even the night before the show, I wasn’t sure if the play was still going to go through in the end.  But even though there uncertainty, it makes me think whether if reality was as uncertain and tense as the film depicted it to be.  One thing that I have learned from watching documentaries is that not everything is what it really seems.  Through being selective on what is used and then juxtaposed with other images, film create its own story.  Of course something had to be there such as people not knowing their lines, people not showing up.  But I find it hard to imagine that with so many problems right before the play that everything worked out so nicely.   A possibility is  that some of theses problems occurred earlier in the year but the movie just edited it so all the problem are jammed together in the end. 

                There are a couple limitations of the film that maybe there was nothing that the film makers could nothing about, which is who can be interviewed. I noticed that the “other” teacher was never interview.  There was also no very many perspectives of what the rest of the student outside of the play and other teachers.  I felt the sources of where we got our information was pretty limited.  But this limitation would have simply been theses people just didn’t want to be film. 

If A Trees Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberations Front

            This was a really cool documentary.  Technique and style wise, its pretty standard, sit down interviews mixed with active interviews.  What really makes the movie is that it is informative and dramatic.  The film picked a great subject with a lot of character.  A strong point of the film is that it tries to be as fair as possible.  The film always tires to show both side of the coin.  One of the main aspect it tries to convey, it the process of how one ends up becoming such a radical.  The film breaks down the perception of radicals being simply crazy or stupid and that the corporations that they attack are not all greedy money grubbers.   I really like how the film also showed how the public would perceive them and how the media would shape the way viewer should see them.

            The documentary really picked a great subject to the focal point.  Even though the viewer doesn’t have to agree with his views, you have respect him and his conviction.  When everyone else had folded in, he stayed strong and was willing to accept the consequences.  I thought it was interesting on who the film interviewed.  There was one individual that they really talked up and seemed to be the leader of the group didn’t show up in the film for a long time but then when he finally makes his appearance he was fat and disappointing.  I think the reason why I was so disappointed in this man because the film built him up so high and then in the end he turned out to go so low.

            I really the like artistic choice when there is the reenactment. The scratchy white image on a plain back drop really heightens the tension.  The style gives a real surreal look which reflects the somewhat surreal reality of doing such an act.  

Al in all it was a good film.  It doesn’t try to convince you which view point is more valid but instead just tries to help you understand where others are coming from .

Nobody's Business

            I think Nobody’s Business is one of the most awesome movie/documentaries I have ever seen.   Its hard for me to describe why I like it, but its awesome.  Though of course this is a professionally made documentary, yet at the same time it is very “unprofessional”.  Instead of fancy charts and zooming pictures, the film just interweaves stock footage, and his footage in a very cleaver way.  I think the best way for me to describe this movie is that it is a really well made home movie. 

            One of the aspects that I love about the film is how “imperfect” it is.  The father is really quite the character who fights against the interviewer, his son.  The father is a strong and distinct character, he has his opinions and he speaks his mind out about it.  One of the main aspects of the film is the son’s struggle with his father on various subjects. No matter how the much the son tries, he can never change his father’s opinion.  It’s a movie where the interview is off on an adventure to discover his heritage.  Unlike Hollywood movies, where just about everything is pretty predictable and the protagonist usually gets what he wants, this movie was the opposite.  The movie was full of disappointments where the interviewer never finds his great grandparents grave, he is never able to convince his father and never really learns much about it his history.  But with all the film’s imperfections, it questions the importance of whether knowing you’re history matters, or if anything in life really matters.