The thin blue line is a documentary free of voice over. One of the most noteworthy parts of this documentary was the way scenes were reenacted, and the way graphics were included to communicate information to the viewer. Using these two visual mediums to communicate information, which is traditionally done through omniscient sounding voice over, gave the film an added aspect of objectivity. In a digital area in which dubious sources should always be considered, I thought the first hand perspectives from the interviews were effective at creating a convincing sense of reality. Similarly, the newspaper excerpts used eye catching fragments of words to creatively string together ideas. Rather than giving us the standard sentence format, there is more cognitive work required, and therefore reward, by asking viewers to contextually piece together words like “work all day”. Combining these newspaper graphics as B-Roll, as interview audio played over it, lended an added sense of legitimacy to the veracity of the statements made by first hand witnesses. Furthermore, it allowed the film to casually highlight a single part of a witnesses statement in real time. This unobtrusive tactic maintained the guise of objective reality, while also functioning as the guiding voice over that is necessary to help viewers piece together the complex story and case. In addition, it helped the content of the interviews be as exciting as possible; newspaper graphics were also used to communicate simple but significant information like the dates events took place. Overall, the combination of newspaper graphics and first person interviews ensured that a sense of legitimacy permeates throughout the film. In addition, it also gave The Thin Blue line a unique aesthetic style, especially with its crime scene reenactments. More than anything, they seemed to toe a line between the cinematic appeal of film, while also maintaining the objective reality. The goriest details, like blood on the ground, was saved for the visual medium of crime scene photographs, which is one of the main ways Errol Morris was able to pull of the dynamic objective reality effect in a film riddled with reenactments.
