For my project, I would like to interview Mike, the friendly custodian who works in Skillman Library. Mike is a very interesting guy–he knows everybody’s name, but few know his. He is always smiling, asking people how they’re doing and being the friendliest a person can be. He is someone that would often be overlooked if it weren’t for the fact that he never overlooks anyone. I want to know Mike’s story.

Questions I would ask:

1. Do you like your job? What makes you get up and go to work everyday?
2. How did you start to work at Lafayette? What brought you here? How did you get to this point in your life?
3. Do you like the kids at Lafayette? Why or why not?
4. Do you think it makes a difference when you interact with students versus if you just performed your job strictly with no interaction whatsoever?
5. Tell me about yourself. What is your family like?
6. What are your values?

I would want to get the interview somewhere in Skillman, because that is where he mainly works. I think I would try to get footage of him on the steps to the basement on the bench, or in a study room to avoid people passing in the background. It would be ideal to do it on a weekend, like a Saturday because its usually not busy, which would make for less distraction in terms of visual and sound.

For B-roll, I would get some footage of him interacting with students, perhaps some footage of his family and personal life to highlight that he is more than just a custodian. I think it would be really cool to get an interview of Mike because a lot of people know his face, and (I think) would find it interesting to know more about him.

When I was in high school, my history teacher showed The Fog of War, another Errol Morris film and it stuck with me throughout my education. I really liked the content of the documentary, because it focused on a widely known issue (The Vietnam War), but portrayed it in an entirely new light by using a different point of view (Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense). He does this again in Thin Blue Line, using points of view to convey a specific message about an event in history. This documentary reenacts the murder investigation of a police officer in Texas, Robert Wood, and the wrongful conviction of Randall Adams from his own point of view, exposing the corrupt justice system in Dallas County.

Morris uses the composer Phillip Glass in many of his documentaries. After I watched The Fog of War, I started listening to Glass’s work, mostly when I was doing my homework. I listen to a composition called “Metamorphosis: Metamorphosis One” often when I’m doing my homework, and I noticed a similar composition in the film, which I was able to pick up on. I really like Glass’s music, and the score for Thin Blue Line is no exception.

Although this documentary is less than 10 minutes, each minute is incredibly powerful. I like how Johnson took something ordinary and turned it into something extraordinary.

The cinematic choice to keep the blimp in the frame at almost all times is incredibly powerful and symbolic in this documentary. It symbolizes that the US is “always watching” the people of Kabul. It also symbolizes that Kirsten Johnson is always watching the blimp. I think its funny that Johnson was told not to film the blimp, but did so anyways because if the blimp could impose on the people of Kabul, Johnson could impose on the blimp.

The blimp is clearly visible yet its capacities are hidden. It has been there since 2009, but its capabilities are classified. It seems worth pointing out that there is a device that was put somewhere to watch people in their everyday lives, yet they do not even know its intentions. This raises yet another ethical dilemma in filmmaking, which is that between the subject and filmmaker. Though a surveillance blimp is much different from an actual cameraperson like Kirsten Johnson, there are similar ethical dilemmas involved.

There is a similar blimp in Maryland to detect long range missile attacks. When she shows the blimp in Maryland, she shoots scenes with an American flag and red, white, and blue streamers with the blimp in the frame to emphasize the disconnect between America representing freedom and America as controlling in terms of surveillance.

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.

The flyer for Kirsten Johnson’s appearance really struck me, because it wasn’t what were used to seeing on these types of things. Usually, in preparation for an event like this, the flyers list the person’s criteria and awards to persuade the students to attend. This one, however, didn’t try to persuade, it simply told her story–the negative and positive. It didn’t skip right to “Kirsten Johnson: Sundance Winner.” She doesn’t only talk about the glitz and glam of filmmaking, but instead starts with a sort of disclaimer, saying that she has faced many challenges in her field both cinematically and morally.

Her second bullet point, stating, “My work can change the way my subject is perceived…” was the one that really stuck out to me. There is a constant debate about the ethical implications of documentary filmmaking, photojournalism, photography, etc, that revolves around the relationship between photographer and subject. I think it will be interesting to explore Johnson’s view on the ethical dilemma, since she has firsthand experience and is not afraid to talk about it, by the looks of her flyer.

There are some main themes that I’ve seen come up a few times, which I think should definitely be considered in our final list:

1. Environmental state of the Delaware River
2. Food waste in the Lehigh Valley
3. The modernization of the city of Easton
4. Immigration/DACA
5. Compare/contrast different areas (cultures) of the Lehigh Valley

For the first 4, there were at least 2 mentions of the topic in the master list. The final one I had a little trouble tackling because people had mentioned various comparisons of communities (Muhlenberg and Allentown, Lehigh and middle school students, and one about the cultures of the LV in general).

For our “bad interview audio,” we first played around with the idea of having music play in the background to overshadow the voices in the interview, but then we remembered back to class when you said that putting the microphone on auto will pick up white noise, so we wanted to try that. We also played around with the volume/input levels to make the audio sound loud when its not. When I accidentally hit the recorder against the desk during the interview, I didn’t stop to rerecord or fix it. Also, I held the microphone close to my mouth so that it would pick up my voice loudly and not pick up so much of the voice of the person I was interviewing. All of these audio aspects made the interview a bad one, because the audio quality was so weak that it interfered with the content of the interview.

When I was getting the non-human world and man-made world audio recordings, I went to the Delaware River. The non-human audio is the sound of the water of the Delaware River rippling and splashing. The man-made world audio consists of cars driving past the river on the road, one car blasting music with the windows down.

When I was getting the human world audio, I went to the library. I didn’t want the people I was recording to know that I was recording them for fear that it would sound unnatural if the people were aware. So, I held the mic over the railing of the library on the second level pointing the microphone downward to capture the audio of the chatter/murmuring of people in Skillman Cafe on the first level. I had to increase the input level so it would pick up the sounds from afar, and turn down the volume so that I wasn’t hearing the playback too loudly.

Julia Ciciarelli and Grace Veghte

Instagram Story.mp3

“The arc refers to the way or ways in which the events of the story transform your characters” (Bernard 23).

Monday’s class was a true introduction to documentary storymaking. It was a haphazard, unfortunate obstacle of events in which we were thrown into a situation and just had to roll with the punches.

My group experienced many technical difficulties. First, our camera battery died, and then our replacement battery was also dead. Unfortunately, we didn’t find out any of this until after we had decided to go outside to shoot our film. After we finally got a replacement camera that was fully charged, the sun had gone down and we had to relocate to inside a classroom. We lost a lot of time during that dilemma, and then struggled to turn on the microphones, which lost us more time. One of the students helped us with setting up the camera and tripod, and from there we were able to get some footage to compile our short doc.

When it came to editing the footage, we faced a lot of problems because no one really knew how to navigate PremierePro. We all took turns editing clips–cutting, adding transitions–so that we all could get a feel for the program. It was especially difficult because this is also the staff’s first year using Premiere, so they are also getting to know the program just like us.

I think the hardest part about last week’s class was time management. The thing about filmmaking is that you have to be able to adjust to any obstacles in a proactive way. Given more time, I think we could have come up with a more creative and fun short doc, but since we were pressed for time, we just wanted to compile the individual clips into one short story.