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