I am interested in doing my personal interview project on Sweet Girlz Bakery in downtown Easton. I enjoy making films that make other people smile and usually have a happy and carefree message in them. Not only is Sweet Girlz a cute and pink cupcake bakery, but it also sends a good message to other small, local business owners. Sweet Girlz takes pride in the fact that they are such a small business and use that to their advantage in getting connected with other local Easton events, such as Baconfest. I have had cupcakes from largescale companies such as Sprinkles, Baked by Melissa, Magnolia Bakery, Georgetown Cupcakes, etc, but they do not compare to local businesses such as Sugar Babe Cupcakes, Sweet Girlz, and Vegan Treats, all located in the Lehigh Valley. Anyone can order cupcakes from Baked by Melissa to any location in the United States, but there is something special about having Sweet Girlz’s amazing cupcakes that are only accessible to people living in the little town of Easton.

If I get the opportunity to interview an owner of Sweet Girlz, I would like to ask her questions from how she started her business to her favorite cupcake flavors. It would be very exciting for the viewer to get a backstage look on how their desserts our prepared, so I would want to get lots of b-roll from inside the kitchen as well. The interior of the store is very pink, vibrant, and girly, which is a key element of how I want the feel of the film to be. The colors and look of the interior of the store will be just as important to making the film as the interview with the owner will be.

An interview with Sweet Girlz’s owners could also go hand in hand with the group documentary I am a part of, and the company could double in the other film about the community of Easton. I emailed the owner of Sweet Girlz yesterday and am waiting for a response back about the interview.

I enjoyed Robert Seidman’s talk with our class on Monday night because he really gave us a good idea of the amplitude of works one can create in this discipline. People who want to work in the documentary field can document about anything that they want to. There are so many different kinds of stories out there waiting to be told-about war, about family, about love. A documentary can tell about a person’s life, it can tell about a particular place; there are so many ways to use the gift of documentary.

Seidman showed us some of his documentaries, all spanning through different times and stories of the world we live in. The documentary that was most gripping for me was Riding the Rails. This film depicted the 250,000+ teenagers who lived on the road because of the Great Depression. This film hooked me in because I have studied the Great Depression, but I did not know of the large number of kids who fled their homes searching for a better life. I would like to watch this on my own time to see the stories of why the children left, how they survived, and how their experiences changed their lives.

Seidman mentioned during his talk that he is an atheist, which I thought was very fascinating because of the documentary he created on the Jewish community. He stated how he would get into many arguments with another very religious man while working on the set because they would want to create the film in different ways. It is interesting how someone’s background can shape the way a film is created.

I looked to Robert Seidman’s talk not as a way for him to show us all the great works he’s created, but a talk to display to us what we can do in the documentary field. I felt inspired after his visit with us and feel motivated to document the compelling stories I see around me.

The Thin Blue Line directed but Errol Morris, depicts the story of a man sentenced to death for a crime that he did not commit. Since this film was created in 1988, all of the other films and shows that come after it are probably modeled after it. One show that directly ties in with this film is Making a Murderer. It is essentially the same idea as The Thin Blue Line, yet set in modern terms. The Thin Blue Line uses only one on one interviews and reenactments to tell its story, which makes it very dramatized. I did not particularly enjoy the reenactments of the moments being described because they made the story seem fake. Making a Murderer does a better job at telling the same sort of story because rather than reenactments, it uses evidence-like old pictures and journals that relate to what the interviewees are talking about.

I am not sure that I can say I enjoyed The Thin Blue Line because it felt too over the top for me. During our discussion with Kirsten Johnson, she mentioned how she did not like to include unnecessary background music because it that directs the viewer in the direction on how they should feel. I agree with this because in this film the music was too dramatic for me and I would have liked it better without any background noises.

I can appreciate this film because it seems to be one of the first crime documentaries that all other films and shows shown now are modeled after. I found the film to be very repetitive in what it was saying, but overall was a great mold for the crime documentaries today.

I love how Brooke Gladstone opened her talk discussing the mass shooting in Nevada- focusing her discussion on current events strung me in from the start. This was a good point to open up with, and was the same tactic used in a performance I saw a week later.

In the following week, I travelled to New York with my dad to watch a dance performance at BAM called “A Letter to my Nephew.” The choreographer, Bill T. Jones, focuses on the political landscape of the present to create meaningful and emotional scenes. This performance also opened up with the Nevada shooting, which instantly brought me back to the Brooke Gladstone talk. I really enjoyed how performers and speakers really talk about these things with us and try to address these current issues that our society has.

My favorite moment in her talk was when someone asked, “How do you focus on your life?” Her response was almost immediate, “Don’t use your phone when getting places (cars, walking).” She said that this was a strategy she often did on the subway; by making more eye contact with people and having less phone time, you will have a more intimate connection with the people around you. When I was working in New York this summer, almost every single person was focused in to their phones on their commute. It annoys me when people walk and don’t look up and just stare at there phones because i KNOW that they are not doing anything of any importance. When I would commute in the mornings, I would try not to look at my phone too much and try to enjoy the city around me. Sometimes I would have my headphones in, but I would create a playlist so I could just keep my phone in my pocket as I walked to work and looked at all the places around me. This is really great advice from Brooke, and if  everyone started to do this, our society would be a lot more observant and conscious of each other.

Whether it’s in Kabul, Afghanistan or Aberdeen, Maryland, there are military surveillance balloon floats in both places. The sudden cuts that Kirsten Johnson placed in her short documentary The Above showed comparisons and helped to relay the point she was trying to make.

With this documentary, Kirsten made me feel as if I was always being watched, whether at church, in my neighborhood, or even on the other side of the world, there will always be this greater force watching me. The only words that were spoken in the film was about God, who is also known as this higher power always watching our actions. The film gave me an eerie feeling, and no matter what I do to try and get away from being watched, I can’t escape it.

I noticed a little clip in this film on the ferris wheel that was a moment inserted into Cameraperson. It was intriguing how it Cameraperson Kirsten clipped the images together to show a whole different meaning than she did in this film. This just shows that the way you edit your footage can really change what you are trying to say.

Kirsten Johnson’s film Cameraperson (2016), was probably my favorite documentary I have seen thus far. When someone else told her this, she joked and said that they probably have not seen a lot of documentaries- but it was in all honesty very moving.

Although there was really no one documentary being told, all of the compiled documentary clips flowed together so nicely, each one complimenting the previous well. There was never a moment where I felt bored or uninterested, something that is often the case with my sidetracking mind. I honestly probably didn’t even blink that much because I was so fascinated with the stories that were being told.

I can remember the exact moment where I started to become very moved by this film; when the health clinic patient and the boy who watched his brother die. After seeing these two clips, I knew that the rest of the film would capture some of the most powerful footage. I admired Kirsten’s technique of filming the health clinic patient’s hands since she could not video her face. Like Kirsten said, all of the emotion is in the hands- even if a person is saying one thing, looking at fidgety hands could mean something different. Even though we as audience members were just watching video of someones hands for minutes straight, the moment never got any less boring.

The moment where we were being shown clips from James Byrd Jr.’s case reminded me of the moment in Grizzly Man when Treadwell was killed. Kirsten strategically chose not to include the pictures of James’ death, just like Herzog chose not to include the audio from Treadwell’s death. Kirsten asked us if it was okay to show other peoples’ death just because we are making a movie, and I would say the answer is no. If she had included the images, the story would have been different (not in a good way) and I agree that she did the right thing.

The scenes of Kirsten’s mother hit home for me because they reminded me of what it was like to be around my grandfather who had Alzheimer’s. It was truly very sad and heartbreaking to watch, and even though Kirsten was smiling with all the interactions with her mother, I know it must have been very difficult to look through old family pictures with her not recognizing who Kirsten’s dad was in relation to her. These were very raw clips of her mother that I could relate to.

Kirsten Johnson’s down to earth personality only added to how highly I thought of the film. I loved how even when her camera was off, she tried to make connections with people and hear their story (when we had Q&A at the end). I highly recommend this film and will be thinking about the impact it has had on me.

The beginning moments in Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone were some of the most captivating and entracing initial shots of a movie because of the sound effects. I kept on waiting for a sound to come, but they never did. Every noise that was made was done so at an unexpected time. which kept the viewers on their toes. I was constantine expecting something to happen with sound, so I was never bored, even though what was actually going on on the screen was not very exciting. I guess this proved the point that good film does not only come from a good plot/good shots (but it definitely helps).

The exercise we did in class going through students’ sounds they recorded and guessing what they were, make me appreciate the beginning of this film all the more. Sound is a very underrated and overlooked part of a film. Often people think that only what is seen is the important part, but sound is something that definitely should not be forgotten about.

I liked the discussion that came up in class that asked “is it cheating if you use a random sound in your film?” I personally do not think so, depending on the context. If it is possible to easily record the sound needed, then why not just record the real thing? If the sound needed is of a particular zebra at the zoo (very random example), then it would be acceptable to take an already recorded zebra noise if the zoo is very far away and hard to access. However, I do not think that using a random sound in film is always acceptable.

After reading Kirsten Johnson’s Director’s Statement from Cameraperson I could relate it back to the class we had two weeks back. When Drew Swedberg came to show us his film Running for Humanity, I was impressed by the way he went with his gut instincts about what he should and should not have included in his film. He mentioned that how the man who he was filming wanted to constantly tell him what to film and how to edit his documentary. I even remember him saying that if he was sitting behind him while he edited the documentary together, Running for Humanity would have never came out like it did.

This reminded me of when Kirsten Johnson stated that one challenge of documentary making is when she “fails to see or follow stories the director I works for hopes I will follow.” It is very hard to have creative differences with someone who you are working with because you just want to make it the way you think would look best. This is something that makes it challenging to work in groups because there are so many different opinions on how to stitch a story together.

Kirsten’s quote is not only true of a director, but of anyone who you might be working with. Working in teams of people both have their advantages and disadvantages; more people to help do the work, but also more conflicting opinions. I have been enjoying my experiences working with other members of our doc class so far and am excited to work on our group documentary.

After brainstorming topics for a Lehigh Valley story, I have concluded that the topic I would like to research further into is on the potential story topics that we brainstormed in class. I like “Easton-To Infinity and Beyond” as well as “A Marketable Modernization”, and I believe that it would be a juicy topic to cover because there are many routes that can be taken to accomplish the task. Both of these idea topics focus on the modernization of Easton and the effects the new restaurants, venues, and attractions have on the community. One topic specifically mentions The Easton Public Market, which I think would be an awesome topic all by itself. Whether it be covering the expansion in Easton on a smaller level, like just making a film on the Public Market, or expanding it to cover more than one part of the city, this would be an issue I would be very interested in creating.

Since I grew up in this area, it has been very exciting for me to see all the changes in the city, even from a couple years ago. Downtown Easton has sprouted a whole cluster of new restaurants and hot spots that have made the area into a destination station. I would love to work with a crew for a documentary like this

I was very moved by the part in Grizzly Man where Herzog films himself listening to the tape of Treadwell’s death. In our class, students were arguing that it was not Herzog’s place to tell Timothy’s mother if she should or should not listen to it, but I disagree. It was not like he was forcing her to do what he said, he was just giving her advice. It is like when you are first trying a food and you ask someone else to taste it first. Maybe the persons response after eating the food will be “I don’t think you will like this.” The person is not telling their friend to not eat the food, just simply giving them a heads up before they dive into the meal.

I particularly liked the way this scene was executed because the camera’s focus was all on the woman face and the only thing that was seen of Herzog was the back of his head. I think it was a good move on Herzog’s part to not include the audio of Treadwell’s death in the film because it would have made the film gory, which is not what it was intended to be. Viewers would have been surprised and maybe offended if the real audio was included in the film. It is true that Herzog is making a documentary on Timothy Treadwell, but I do not believe that not including the audio of Timothy’s death made the film any less legit.