Class 1/12/2015

Today we had our first lesson on documentaries. We watched one of the first documentaries ever made called Nanook of the North released in the 1920's which followed the "rule of third's" and was about the life of an Eskimo clan. Then Zhu Laoshi showed us a documentary called the Lift filmed in around 2001 about people that came and went from a lift in an apartment block in Britain. Documentaries aren't as staged as fictional movies, but still staged in the way that they have to research and choose what goes into your documentary to make it more interesting. To me the Lift seemed very raw and innovative, but Zhu Laoshi told us much about it was staged, for example the maker of the film Marc Isaacs brought in a fly into the lift to have something as a cutaway tool, and chose the people to be featured before actually going and filming.

(Left) The original movie poster for Nanook of the North

(Right) One of the people featured in Lift