13/4/16 - Film Class

Today in class my partner, Rahul, was sick so my workflow was stinted, but I tried my best to still be efficient. I started our schedule, and started my production plan. I finished most of the Artistic Statement. Hopefully when he gets better we can figure out which times we can film, ask for the necessary permission, and complete our schedule.

Artistic Statement

Overview

Our bilingual documentary has a central theme of school life. Its thesis is that Western and Chinese education undoubtedly extremely different, but to what extent are the two different or even similar? It will aim to shed some light on a strand of this question by showcasing a day in the life of a local Chinese student in Hangzhou and an international student studying a year abroad in Hangzhou. It will be 5-7 minutes long, and juxtapose Chinese versus international culture.

What happens in a day in the life of a local student in Hangzhou? What happens in a day in the life of an international student studying abroad in Hangzhou? What are the similarities and differences between them? How does it influence their opinion on the importance of education for life and the future?

Purpose

Those are all questions our documentary will endeavour to answer. The answers will be split into a main part and shorter closing part. The first three questions will be in the main part, the two students’ stories intertwined closely based on similarities or chronological order. The main part will focus more on facts, although it will certainly contain opinion and surface-level thoughts. The shorter closing part will answer the fourth question, so it will focus more on deeper opinion and insight, or even critique.

Film Class Last Week and This Week: Grizzly Man + Interview Shots

This week we spent the whole lesson finishing watching the documentary Grizzly Man. We watched it for the last half of class last week as well. The first half of class last week was spent in groups of 3 practicing interview shots is a 2005 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. It chronicles the life and death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell. The film includes some of Treadwell's own footage of his interactions with grizzly bears before 2003, and of interviews with people who knew, or were involved with Treadwell, as well as professionals dealing with wild bears. He and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and eaten by a grizzly bear in 2003. Treadwell's footage was found after his death. The bear that killed Treadwell and Huguenard was later encountered and killed by the group retrieving the remains of the victims.

This is the theatrical release poster.

          Albeit slow-paced, I think the documentary was really interesting and quite poignant. I think Treadwell's authentic footage was quite well-meshed with interviews and information about Timothy's life and death. Personally I think it was sort of "boring" as Xavier complained about publicly earlier, but I think just as the director Werner Herzog narrated over a human-less shot of leaves rustling in between Treadwell's takes, there's a certain beauty to the rawness, the slow-paced authenticity. Personally I'm both very intrigued but too scared to hear the audio of their actual death. I haven't seen an animal activist portrayed in such depth before, so it was a new experience for me seeing the views and motivation and human behind this fervent guardian of beasts.
        As a filmmaker, I think Timothy was quite opinionated on how he wanted his shots to appear and was relatively successful and achieving them, no matter of how many shots it took or the wild conditions (for example his eulogy to the dead fox, monologue shouting for rain and the events ensuing in the night like the tent caving, etc.) and mixed with Werner's clever filmmaking, the film was quite thoughtful. Werner's close-ups of the interviewees did make me uncomfortable at times, but I think that added to the uncomfortable atmosphere of Timothy's death. For example, the shot below was a self-initiated shot by Treadwell that I find interesting, and follows rule of thirds with Timothy in the foreground and the small bear playing in the background. I hope to include clever shots like this in my documentary.

This is a shot from a tripod in the opening scenes of the film.