Thin Blue Line is a documentary that centers around the story of a man who was egregiously wrongly convicted of the crime of murdering a police officer in Dallas County Texas in 1976. The documentary to me was so great because it didn’t attempt to artificially increase intrigue, it allowed the story to speak for itself. At first the film to me was a little dry but as I watched I became dumbfounded at the profound lack of humanity that the prosecution presented throughout the case. The documentary was a great  watch for new documentarians because  every interview was important to the film; they carried the documentary forward. The B-roll didn’t age well but the human emotion and tension produced by such a story was completely and utterly captivating. As Bernard referred to in her book Documentary and Storytelling The film did everything a good documentary does, it had a tangible goal (to free a wrongly convicted man), was true to the story, made me feel something, and had a defined spine and theme. Though Thin Blue Line was probably more narrative driven than character driven the people include in the doc all played important roles in carrying the film forward, there weren’t any wasted interviews. Thin Blue Line is a great documentary and I learned a lot from watching.

Kirsten Johnson’s The Above is a short documentary rich with symbolism and interesting images. Through her documentary KJ questioned how far is too far for a government to reach in the name of keeping the peace? The film which spanned less than 10 minutes centered around the presence of an ominous U.S military blimp on opposite sides of the world. While it seemed that the short doc took “detours” from the main track of the film every scene in some way related back to the mysterious blimp. One thing I appreciated about her film was the fact that though it was short it was a dense project. I got the sense that every shot had a purpose and tied closely to the theme of her documentary.

Audience, I believe, is one of the most important aspects of film making. There are a plethora of components that must be considered when thinking about the audience. Sheila Curran Bernard states, “Who is your intended audience?…Is your film intended not for broadcast but for use by community or educational groups?” (43). Obviously these are critical questions; makes a huge difference with regards to the final product of the film.

Considering we just received our final projects, this is something I’ve been thinking about. I am doing the “Youngin’s” project so we will be dealing with kids and maybe young adults. Thus, thinking about audience, I need to figure out if this should be intended for their peers or for the faculty and parents. Or maybe it would be intended for everyone in the community so people can witness other great things that the younger community members are doing with their lives. Maybe, even, this could be shown to the government officials in the community so they could potentially provide more funding when they realize what these great kids are getting into. Although it isn’t established, I have been thinking a lot about this project and how the audience will play a role.

During Brooke Gladstone’s Q and A, she talked about public radio and it’s intimacy. She said that she felt as though listen to the radio was more intimate than watching television, or going on the computer. I have never listened to NPR, but I could still relate, in a way, to Brooke.

Growing up, my parents would always listen to the Steve Harvey Morning Show and the Breakfast club on our way to work/school. It was pretty intimate; felt like we were sitting there listening, talking, and laughing along with them. Each morning, we never really cared to hear what songs were playing. I just wanted to hear who the “Donkey of the Day” was and who Nephew Tommy was going to prank.

In addition, my dad is a big reader, but he can’t read in the car or else he gets motion sickness. Instead, he enjoys books on tape. Although I am not a big reader, I can easily get into the books on tape. Every road trip, there’s at least one book on tape that we get to hear. There is a sense of intimacy here, too, as if someone were readying a children’s book at the library.

Brooke Gladstone said that we need to get boredom back into our lives. She suggested deleting apps and carving free time into my schedule. So I deleted Facebook and Instagram and tried to carve out time for me (key word: tried). Even after these changes, I did not find myself bored. I often found myself playing games on my phone and looking deeper into some of my other social media apps. Even though I took the steps that Brooke suggested I didn’t notice any difference. So I took another step and downloaded an app called moment to monitor my phone usage. This app tracks the amount of time you spend on your screen a day. It counts the number of phone pick ups and how long you spend on each app. It also has a week long challenge where you set goals and challenge yourself to spend less time with your phone. It starts off with observing yourself, then distancing yourself form your device, not taking photos, to delete an app, take a fakection, observe something else, and to get bored. The first day I spent a total of 3:25 minutes on my phone with over 100 pick ups! I quickly changed my habits and cut down :30 minutes. By day three I had cut my time in half. That’s when I noticed the changes. I was not bored. I did not spend time thinking to myself. Instead I found myself filling my time with the people around me. Instead of taking five to ten minutes to relax on my bed on my phone, I found myself in a friends room talking. The way I observed myself was very different. I felt like I was documenting my life, but no through a camera, but through sheer experience. I want to thank Brooke Gladstone for making me put down my phone and find something to do.

The Thin Blue Line is an amazing action packed documentary that has to thank it’s production a lot for its success. It is both a documentary and a cop action short. The murder scene is a reenacted scene that changes as the story develops. It is shot with two different cars to play out two different scenarios. It is also shot with a strong use of inserts. The inserts give an intimacy to the scene, making you feel present and knowing every detail. This helps build and retain view interest as they slowly unfold a long case study. They do this by including shots like the partner drinking her milk shake at the beginning. At first it seems like a harmless milkshake, but then you learn that it was this milkshake that kept the partner in the car, when she should’ve been helping. The sense of abandonment that the partner had in that scene and the chaos of the murder is captured by seeing the milkshake fly out of the cop window and spill all over the road. Little shots like this kept interest and immersed the view in intimate detail. 

Reenacting scenes are a very powerful form of filming that documentaries use to keep viewers interested. It is very successful and most widely used by the history and discovery channel when they reenact great human feats of surviving animal attacks or to show life as it would have been back in the caveman era. Now we see more and more documentaries that are more of a production and a reconstruction of a past event. Seeing more of these kind of scenes in documentaries make me wonder what makes the difference between a documentary like thin blue line and a historical fiction movie like Sully or Captain Phillips? When does one become fiction and the other a documentary? Is it adding dialogue, or when you ever so slightly stray from the truth? 

I thought the documentary was very interesting. Even though the reenacted scenes might sometimes appear a little exaggerated in the acting or obviously not real, they are helpful to really vision how the murder happened. I really liked the way the two subjects were introduced because we do not know at first who might be guilty and who is not and having the two subjects being actually interviewed and explain what happened from their perspectives makes it more powerful. The last scene is one of my favorites, where all is filmed is the tape recorder on the table and Harris is being interviewed for one last time. He says that he feels bad for Adams and basically explains how Adams was innocent. If that last interview had been introduced at the beginning of the film it wouldn’t have made the same effect but the fact that it is the last piece of information we get makes us feel even more the injustice that may have happened.

I had never heard of this murder so after finishing the film, I directly looked online to see if Randall Dale Adams was still alive and if he had spent more time in prison. What came up was that a little after the documentary, he was released from prison. Granted, it was not just because this documentary had come out but it did bring light to the matter and creating it the way it was with interviews from him and Harris really made a compelling argument for his innocence, speaking to the idea that documentaries are powerful tools and can make a difference.

Brooke Gladstone and Kirsten Johnson had very different ways of approaching an audience. Yet, the two of them were both very effective in execution. Kirsten’s aim seemed to be centered around engagement with the students in class. She surfed around the classroom; making a point to get very close to every student she spoke with. She was dynamic in speech as she would switch from being very loud and excited to being relatively calm and sincere. I really loved how she could read a moment and use her voice and actions to get her point across. On the contrary, Brooke remained poised and relatively stationary throughout her presentation. While this was very different from Kirsten’s approach, I still believe Brooke led a very insightful discussion. Brooke really understood that her job in the classroom that day was to inform and to provide new perspective. She did just that. She came with heaps of reliable information and she related her points to issues that were current and relevant. Overall, she offered an interesting presentation that anyone could draw something from. As a future artist and documentarian, I am expecting to be put into situations where I am going to have to share something with an audience. Seeing both Brooke Gladstone and Kirsten Johnson do this was very inspiring and I am sure I will be influenced by both of their approaches in my future presentations.

I truly enjoyed having Brooke speak in class. Being that I am a huge fan the NPR Tiny Desk series, I was excited to be meeting an influential person in the company. However, I did not know exactly what to expect from her presentation. Now after having listened to her wise words about the role of technology, about news and media, and about leading an effective argument, I am glad to have had a chance to hear her speak because I was opened to several new ideas. For example, I thought she brought up an interesting point when she began talking about fear of technology. She began comparing people who are afraid of the Internet today to individuals who in the past were afraid of technology that now seems nearly harmless and very useful. As a person who sometimes drifts towards the anti-Internet side of this argument, this was a nice reminder that change is not always bad. I also really liked her advice about the value of searching for a variety of reliable news outlets and even paying a little bit of money to allow news organizations to provide a good service. Finally, I thought she provided a wise answer to the question of how to win an argument. She said that the best way to get someone to believe what you believe in is to present them with information that makes your argument relevant to them. This is a difficult task. However, I am going to make a fervent effort to implement this and all her other advice into my day to day life.

A couple of weeks prior to the screening of Cameraperson, I remember reading in Bernard’s book about the selective process of manipulating footage into a story or an argument. I took a stab at this myself during the Instagram video assignment, where I compiled some of the random shots I had taken in the last few months into a movie about my summer. Doing this gave me a special appreciation for Kirsten’s work in her film. As a person who is very interested in documenting life as it happens, I was truly astonished at her decision to make this movie. More specifically, I was really drawn in by her idea to turn seemingly unrelated footage that she had recorded for other purposes into a new film that offered a unique perspective. And her execution was perfect. The movie was nicely balanced as she countered intense moments of anger and sadness with funny and more light-hearted content. For this reason, I believe that this movie was in many ways a refreshing reminder of life and what it means to be human. Overall, I think my main take away from watching Cameraperson was encouragement to keep trying to document my life and my experiences. I look forward to the different stories that my footage will reveal.