This short documentary was very interesting. Her choice to compare the blimp in Afghanistan versus Maryland was brilliant. The cultural differences were really obvious. I noticed she included a clip of her and the boy who lost one eye in this film, but which was also included in Cameraperson.  Most of the story focused on things that were in the sky. Obviously the main focus was on the U.S Military blimp, but there was also emphasis on balloons and even the ferris wheel. One thing that stood out to me was when the man was explaining his beliefs regarding to God and the balloon. It was interesting because you could tell he was deeply ingrained in his religious beliefs. He claimed that God is the creator of all things, God sees everything and knows everything, when the man is asked about the balloon he states that God made the man who made the balloon and God put the idea in that mans head. This interview was very significant to the documentary as a whole. It showed a point of view of someone living in Afghanistan and knowing that he is being constantly watched by a different country. He most likely assumes that the reason his country is being watched is due to another country’s lack of trust. I think the message is to show that there is privacy invaded all over the world, at least that’s how I interpreted it and that is the thought that is connected to my emotions about the documentary. I felt bad that this blimp is invading citizens every day lives whether it is in Afghanistan or even the United States. There is really no sense of privacy in the modern world especially with the rise of technology. Part of me disagrees with this method used by my country, but also part of me understand why some people who hold power in our government might think this method is necessary. I think it’s great that Kirsten was able to gather so many differently angled shots of the blimp and interweave them together, it made it feel like time was passing by when it might have all been shot in one day.

The first thing I noticed during this short video was the usage of sound in the first minute. The opening scene was quiet, and tranquil with the white balloon as an omnipresent blob in the background as the children gazed up at is. Almost immediately after the title sequence, the loud metal clanking began, and I appreciated the overlay of the sound while the camera filmed only landscape because e it offered the message that this was not a friendly blimp but rather a menace to society and posed a potential threat to the civilians of Kabul. The sound throughout this film was by far the most stand-out portion of the video, and I really liked the transition between the loud and abrasive presence of the United States soldiers on their tanks to the loud, playfulness of the boy on the Ferris Wheel. The boy on the ride says, “I’m so high, I can see the whole of Kabul” which was a bit eerie because in reality, he cannot, but the blimp can. Even more terrifying is that the blimp is “classified information” so the citizens of Kabul have no idea what is happening when it goes by them, they simply continue on living their lives, always under the eye of this unknown presence.

I like that the story is constructed with different scenes of people of all ages doing different everyday life with the main connecting theme that the white blimp is ALWAYS there, and always watching them. It made me feel like the blimp was watching me!
The words of the bearded man were powerful. He believes God is an omnipresent and all powerful god who knows everything at all times. In his mind, it doesn’t matter who created the balloon because God created the man who is in charge of the balloon, and thus it is God watching everyone in Kabul.

I absolutely LOVED the transition between the balloon just laying in the dirt in Kabul to the scene of Abderdeen, Maryland that looked like quintessential Americana. The transition between the blimp in Kabul and the blimp in Maryland is unreal, and it was important that the scenes from Maryland showed no citizens watching/fearing the balloon, but rather images of “the home of the free”, i.e. the flag blowing in the wind, and other red, white, and blue streamers blowing.  This juxtaposition really solidified the idea of fear in Afghanistan and power/tranquility in the US. The final image with the blimp right near the church and the cross was chilling, especially next to the words that said that the blimp would still be flown even if the cameras were down. This means that the US is choosing to constantly survey Kabul, giving them a God-like power. I was left with more evidence that our country is imposing on the innocent lives of others, and I am terrified.

WOW.  So. Many. Emotions.

That is the only way to truly describe how I felt after sitting down for what felt like the longest, most emotional roller coaster of my life, also known as the documentary Cameraperson. To say this film was incredible is an understatement. It was absolutely genius and accomplished exactly what a documentary should accomplish: it made us audience members truly feel and experience authentic moments of the human experience. I felt things I never knew I felt, and I cannot even imagine how KJ deals with everything that she has seen in her life. I loved that most of the scenes were simply taken from footage she had shot for other documentaries. Therefore, she was not “filming with a intended purpose” but rather editing and weaving together a new story. Each story somehow wove beautifully into the following story and I liked trying to get in KJ’s mind and see how she saw the world. I think one of the best parts of the documentary was that a lot of the connections were truly open to interpretation and I found this out after discussing the film with some friends in the class. We all related to different elements in the film, because we all had different backgrounds and different experiences that we took with us to the viewing of the documentary. For example, some of the hardest scenes for me to watch were the ones of her mother, because I have a grandmother with severe Alzheimer’s who is on the brink of dying.

I truly appreciated how KJ took the time afterwards to have a lengthy Q &A session with us, and how high-energy she was throughout it all, even after she had spent so much time with students during the day.

After the viewing and the Q & A, I felt physically and emotionally drained.  It also didn’t help that I checked my phone after class only to find messages about an important incident with one of my old summer camp campers that I needed to tend to ASAP….

All in all, I am blessed for the experience of Cameraperson and I definitely think that I learned a lot about where the bar is set for a truly incredible documentary in which the conversation can continue on forever.

“Every film is a documentary.” – Bill Nichols

I love that definition because I agree with it so deeply. I feel as every film that has been made and is going to get made is either a: 1) documentaries of wish-fulfillment (fictions) or 2) documentaries of social representation (non-fictions). Therefore, what I am going to say is greatly related to this course:

If anybody are looking for autobiographical film, Trip by Jhene Aiko (the singer), is a must watch film. This film lasts for a total for 23 or so minutes and goes into there journey that she went through after the death of her brother. Her and her brother had a very close relationship and his death (due to cancer) affected her greatly, specifically musically, emotionally, and future relationships with her boyfriends.

This short film is an emotional rollercoaster and serves as a perfect segue for her new album with the same title. If you have anytime, check it out.

I felt honored that gave us the time of day to be able to come upon us and present her film unto the student body. She the time out of her day to come and present this documentary that was very deep and personal to her. Her vulnerability is something that I greatly admire. She was not afraid to speak her mind and give us her most honest opinion. She did not act like she was above another person, she treated us as respected individuals and gave the floor to us, so we would be able to say what was on our mind in regards to the film.

Her responses came as not a shock, but as fulfillment. She responded in such a way that showed me that she actually cared and took the time to make this documentary as unique as possible. She did not just put a bunch of old clips together and called it a day, but took the effort to piece every clip together to get a story across.

No wonder why Cameraperson currently has 99% rating on rotten tomatoes and has received multiple awards for its production and structure, Cameraperson was a very intriguing and eyeopening experience through the lens. The different skill set that she presented within the film, the camera placement, the dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee, all played an important role in the impact fulness of the film as a whole. Not only did she do that, she also used multiple other collages to be able to tell a story about another instance (i.e. using the interview of the man who broke into the FBI to explain the feeling that she was feeling when the nurse was trying to keep the baby a live). That part of the movie was so unexpected and I amazed at how well that it worked within the film. I wish to be able to use some of those skills within my own work later on in the future.

In addition to her technical skills, I really admired how she was able to use her subjects and the objects surrounding them to effectively affect the movie’s tone and audience’s mood. The one thing that I figured out within the film was that children was the main factor in how and what way the tone would shift within the film. Ideas like this shows the creativeness that she has as a documentarian and this is very vital in creating an amazing artistic piece.

Cameraperson is an examination of the ethics of documentary filmmaking. It is unlike anything I have seen before–a documentary consisting of the ethical dilemmas of other documentaries. I have explored the ethics of photography, filmmaking and photojournalism in other classes, but I have yet to come across something as unique as Cameraperson.

I was first introduced to the ethical debate surrounding subject and photographer my freshman year at Lafayette, when Professor Smith showed us “Starving Child and Vulture” by Kevin Carter. Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist who flew to the Sudan in 1993 to document the famine that was tormenting its people. Carter’s image entitled “Starving Child and Vulture” is a color photograph of an emaciated child hunched over on the ground, with a vulture lurking behind. Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for his image, but it came at a cost. His photo sparked an international debate about the ethics of photography, and when it is acceptable for photographers to intervene. After his photo and intent had been scrutinized and debated, Carter took his own life in 1994. 

Now, I’m in a class called “History in Pictures” in which most of our material involve the ethics surrounding photography. We’ve read Sontag, Barthes, Lutz and Collins, and many more theorists that are interested in the same kind of ethical dilemmas as Kirsten Johnson is with Cameraperson. The thing that separates Kirsten Johnson’s work from theirs is that Johnson’s is academic and entertaining. I was fully absorbed in her documentary, while I could very easily dose off while reading scholarly theories. Kirsten is able to draw attention to a very heavy subject matter, while sharing her own perspective, entertaining her audience, and engaging us in the debate instead of just presenting it to us. Johnson is able to connect with her audience within the first five minutes of meeting them, and continue to keep them engaged with her eloquence and wisdom. She came to all three of my classes on Monday, two of which were 3 hours long, and yet each time I didn’t want to leave. Kirsten Johnson’s visit to Lafayette is one of those things I will look back on when I am 50 years old and tell my children about.

Going into the showing of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson, I didn’t really know what to expect. It was definitely an experience. I thought the entire film was absolutely brilliant. Every single scene touched me and I just really enjoyed the entire film. I thought she pulled off her goal of wanting this film to be more like a visual memoir rather than a documentary really well. The sound quality in this film was incomparable. There was a shot of a thunderstorm and the sound of the thunder was so crisp I felt like I was outside with her. There were so many intimate moments that were shown between Kirsten and her subject that I felt touched me emotionally even though I was watching it on screen. Some of those moments included the boy with the one eye and how he started crying a little bit, the middle aged woman who throws all her mothers stuff around the room, they were just really powerful moments. There was also a recurring theme of hands which she discussed during the discussion time after the showing. She said that you can tell a lot about a person by what their hands are doing and I think that is very true. My favorite hand shot was when the young adult was in the pregnancy clinic telling her story. I thought it was moving because we actually never saw her face, but we could tell when she began to cry because you could hear it and see the girl moving one had to her face to wipe her tears. I thought that was a really effective and creative method to express human emotion.

After the showing, Kirsten came back into the theater and we had a discussion. The first thing I noticed was that not only is she really funny and smart, but she is really just a great people person. You can just tell she’s very good at dealing with people and talking to them which must benefit her career as a documentary filmmaker. One thing I took away from the discussion was her point about finding a way to represent death respectfully and with dignity. She tied it in to the scene where the baby is slowing going to pass away because the hospital is unable to get the oxygen he would need to have to survive. I was also able to tell when she was talking about that scene that she is still very distraught over it which obviously portrayed how she developed a genuine sense of love, appreciation, and fondness for the people she met while filming. Another thing Kirsten talked about that resonated with me was her point connecting with her subjects while she films. She explained to the class by saying, “I’m here and I can stay here” “lock in”. She stressed to the class that your subjects need to have trust in your and that it is good if you can develop a relationship of them and especially a relationship of trust since you could potentially be filming something that is intimate and personal.

I really appreciated the technique she used where she would show something that might have been difficult to digest and then she went to directly to a clip of her children or family members being silly. It was a great way to break up the dark scenes featured in her film. Lastly, her point about our relationship to other people’s pain was really fascinating. She discussed that it’s natural for us to be curious about how other people deal with pain. She said it was difficult not to immediately stop filming and comfort her subject in pain, but she knew it would be emotionally strong if she was able to capture the footage, and she was correct.

Overall, the showing and discussion was moving and a thought provoking experience. I really enjoyed her creative methods and styles. Overall, I really enjoyed myself.

As I finally sit down to write the response I have been thinking about since walking out of class Monday night, I am realizing how hard it is to put into words the feelings I experienced both while watching Kirsten Johnson’s film and listening to her speak. I was entirely moved by Kirsten’s film that was able to capture the attention of so many around the world, along with her natural ability to captivate a room as she did after the screening.

On a technical film level, from sound, to lighting, to clips capturing the emotions of those Kirsten was interviewing, the film was absolutely incredible. There was not a second I wanted to look away, as I was entirely intrigued and almost never wanted it to end. The sounds she was able to capture and manipulate to evoke certain emotions at certain times was astounding. There were so many moving parts that came together, yet they did not disrupt the flow of the film.

On a meaningful level, I was moved by how much Kirsten’s film personally impacted me. Sometimes it is important to reflect on how small we truly are, and how our problems are so incredibly insignificant compared to what the rest of the world faces on a daily basis. There are people who can find things to complain about almost everyday, and yet those two women shopping at that tree with their man-made axes were smiling and laughing, and that nurse had to maintain her calmness and optimism as she delivered a baby in conditions many of us could not imagine. As we were all watching, there was a sense of mutual emotion felt with every scene, and I think that is one of the most difficult aspects of filmmaking – keeping your audience both engaged and on the same emotional level.

Kirsten Johnson as a person embodies all that it takes to be a documentarian, let alone an incredible human. Her ability to connect with the people and places she films is evident throughout her work, and her eagerness to then tell their stories is what makes her so unique and her work so meaningful.

There were some parts of the Q and A that really stood out to me. At one point KJ was sharing about being up close and personal. I really valued that because that can change the whole dynamic. For instance, KJ walked up the the people asking the questions to see them, and in a sense have a better connection with them. Not only did she walk up to them, but she also was able to zone everyone else out as if no one else was in the room. Essentially, she transformed the group Q and A into multiple individual conversations.

Furthermore, another part that stood out was when she was talking about having the camera and she mentioned that it requires a sort of balance. She can’t just be behind the camera not engaged. She also cannot be too engaged and not trying to get good film. KJ basically has to connect with the people she wants to film but also not connect too much that it hindered her filming. I found it interesting that she brought up this point just because it seems like a tough task. Her work, amazing and very skillful, digs deeper than most documentaries. She develops a personal connection that obviously ends up holding a special place in he heart.