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.

I appreciated that the McClane book has brought up something that I noticed during a lot of my reading and during our class discussions: nearly all of the esteemed documentarians are white men… So the question is if these minority groups are still making films but have less of a profile or if they are simply not creating films to begin with? McClane says that out of the 13,400 members of the Director’s Guild of America, only about 7% are female directors. In 2003, white men directed more than 80% of US television epsidoes, while African-Americans only directed  43, or 5% and Latinos only 14 or 2%. This was not completely shocking to me because in my mind, documentary-making is a lot more “open-minded” than television, and I wish that McClane had provided specific statistics on documentary directing, but the point is still valid: the history of documentary film is built upon white men.

This ties back to a Gender and Stem course I took in which we discussed how science is never “objective” because it comes from the point of view of the scientists and is therefore limited by that scientist’s inherent biases. Thus, if a scientist is a white man, he is coming from a much different background and set of experiences than an African-American woman. This seems to hold true for filmmaking as well. I really like that in the documentary Wattstax (1973), director Mel Stuart used a crew made up of as many black filmmakers as he could find to pursue the “insider’s perspective” of the mores and problems of urban black Americans in the mid-1970s. If filmmaking included more people from different gender/racial/ethnic backgrounds, I do believe that the content and authenticity of documentaries could become a lot more dynamic. The main order of business then is how to make documentary-making more accessible to non-white men?

Also, if this book had been written by a man, would this topic even have been brought up?

Kirsten Johnson’s words left a powerful effect on me, especially when she said “I can and will leave a place I film (a war, a refugee camp, etc.) when the people I film cannot”.  This brings in the notion of power and privilege which is so so important, especially in regards to documentary making. As a director, when you go into a situation to “get the best story”, you have the power to use your privilege to take what you need (i.e., interviews, shots, etc.) and then leave and go back into the “real world”. However, every single individual that you filmed doesn’t get to leave with you. They are still living their reality, and what might make an exciting or depressing documentary is just how they are living their every day life. This is why I liked what KJ said later on: “My work can change the way my subject is perceived by the people who surround him/her and can impact reputation or safety for years in the future”. If a filmmaker acknowledges that they have privilege then they should use that privilege to change the way the subject is perceived for the good. Media in general, especially powerful and factual documentary-making is one of the best ways to distribute information and impact the world. But it’s such a difficult line to navigate how to film a certain population without extorting them just for a “good film” but rather to enlighten the world about them.

This is something I’ve struggled with a lot as a photographer, especially in terms of my portraits. For my “Les Gens de Malchance” vernissage, I was terrified to go up to people experiencing homelessness because I did not want to seem like I was “prostituting” their life to make a good photo. It was a strange and difficult dynamic, especially after I sat on the ground with one young girl for a few hours, just watching everyone else walk by. As it started getting dark, I realized it was time for dinner and left to go back to my host family… However, she had no place to go. Outside, on the cold, dark ground was her home, whereas I had the privilege to “opt in” to her lifestyle for a few hours, and then “opt out”. I’m hoping I can ask KJ a few questions about how to reckon with one’s self about this difficult navigation because I often become too worried or afraid of offending someone and so miss out on filming opportunities.

There was a lot of really great ideas that our class thought of and I thought it was particularly interesting that there was a lot of overlap between the ideas.  My idea, “Easton–To Infinity and Beyond” is almost identical to “On the Rise”  and a “Marketable Modernization”, but just coming from all different angles. I found it interesting that the title “Marketable Modernization” immediately put a positive spin on the rise in new industries/businesses in Easton, whereas I felt that “On the Rise” and my title had more of a cautionary feeling associated with it. This is important to note because I think it brings up the question of which angle or bias we should come at the subject with. Do we place the idea of gentrification in viewers’ minds right away, or leave it open to interpretation and refer to it as “modernization”?

A few other topics surrounding food deserts and food scarcity (“Urban Desert”, “The Loss we Gain”, and “Reconnecting with Our Food”) could also be interwoven with these ideas of gentrification since a lot of the new businesses that come in to Easton have done nothing to change the fact that it is a food desert since they are so expensive and less accessible to the average person.

For me, the most important part about filming a documentary is to choose a topic that myself and the other students are equally passionate about. I hope to connect with new people whom all have a variety of different strengths so that we can work together to really create and pursue an engaging story!

It may sound naive, but before reading Part II of Bernard’s book, I had no idea of how much truly went in to preparing for a documentary. I guess I just assumed that someone thinks of an idea for a documentary and then goes and shoots it, but Bernard made me realize that finances are the ultimate player behind whether or not a film gets made. When I think about movements made within the arts, I always think about passion. I think about people who are going after what they want to do, whether or not that makes them financially successful or not. However, this book opened my eyes to seeing that filmmaking is just expensive in general and that financial backing is just as crucial as passion to get the film off and running. It is scary to realize how much time and effort must go into pitching one’s documentary idea to get funding for every step of the way and that discontinuing a documentary just right before completion could realistically happen. I really enjoyed Bernard’s pointers for proposal writing especially about avoiding “unfounded hyperbole” and “overproduction”.  Documentaries stem from the director’s passion, and so the proposals are truly the first round of getting someone else just as passionate and excited as you are on the subject matter.

1.Bad Audio

2. Human World

3. Made World

4. Non-Human World

The hardest part about this project was actually deciding which sounds we wanted to record. We wanted to be creative but also record sounds that were pleasing to listen to.  After sharing different ideas such as people talking in dining halls, fingers tapping on keyboards, or papers ruffling in the library, it became very evident that it was hard to separate human sounds from the “made-world” as there is a lot of overlap. Is typing on a keyboard a human sound or a made sound? We are at a point in society in which our brain has literally mapped our cell phones to our body in our proprioception input, yet they are still technically part of the “made-world” and no the “human world”.  Ditching any idea that could have fit into multiple categories, my group headed towards Emily’s car and decided to play around with the many sounds it made to count as the “made-world”. This turned out to be our most successful audio as there was a lot we could do with the car, from turning the keys in the ignition, to the windshield wipers, to using the turn signals.

After that, we decided to take an adventure down behind the FAMS building near the Arts Trail to capture what we could easily distinguish–sounds from the living, non-human world. We recorded the water rushing down the dam, as well as the sound of large rocks being thrown in, however the water was so loud that even with a smaller input on the Zoom recorder, our audio has the sense of just being loud white noise. The living human-world was a bit harder, but we ultimately decided to record Kenzie running with heavy breathing overlayed on top since breathing and movement are two of the basic features of life that humans (and lots of other animals!) can do.

It was interesting to compare our good audio to the “bad quality” version taken on my phone while driving up the hill. The wind from the air was extremely loud and overpowering and it is clear to see the difference that using the audio recorders makes!

Overall, it was a really fun project and made us all really think about the importance of audio and all the types of sounds out there in the world.
Kenzie Corbin, Emily Ramirez, and Luke Madronal.

For this post, I focused on Bernard’s backstory techniques! I knew that because I was running the Half Marathon that weekend that I could potentially have a lot of great footage. Originally I envisioned myself videotaping while running the 13.1 miles, and especially as I crossed the finish line, but then I realized that filming while running alongside hundreds of people was nearly impossible. Instead I captured some “B-roll” of the moments before the race started as well as interviewed some people after the race was over. While reading the Bernard chapters I was resting my then-tired legs on my hammock outside and realized that I could utilize voice over to give context as to why I had run the race that day.

I have two options for my Lehigh Valley Documentary. One would be as I mentioned in a previous post, regarding the mindfulness and meditation research and work I will be doing with the Gracedale senior citizens. Many of them have cognitive impairments, so it would be interesting to use documentary as a way of tracking the positive benefits of yoga and meditation. However, I understand that because several residents have cognitive deficits, it may be difficult to gain consent or filming privileges therefore I am also looking into doing a documentary based on the gentrification of Easton and how this affects the community as a whole.

I know that there are a lot of negative feelings towards Lafayette’s expansion (http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/easton/index.ssf/2017/09/easton_planners_reject_lafayet.html#incart_river_index) and I want to be able to examine the opinion of both Lafayette growth and other “gentricated” ideas that Easton has in the works. I first noticed the gentrification of Easton after the Easton Indoor Public Market was opened up. Easton is a food desert, so at first I thought having an indoor market would make healthy and fresh food easily accessible to residents, however this is not the case at all because everything is so EXPENSIVE. More and more pricey bars and restaurants have emerged since the 2014 when I first started college and I would love to interview local residents to see how they feel about this change.

Title:   Easton- To Infinity and Beyond

Longline: A documentary examining the various opinions regarding the growth of new restaurants, venues, and attractions in Easton as well as the expansion of Lafayette College into the surrounding community.

This was my first experience working as a team on a creative project. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of directing, filming, and editing the short documentary in such a short amount of time but I was really impressed by how effectively my group worked together. I loved that the groups were mixed with people from other schools, and I loved getting to talk to Annie and Mekhi and learn a little about their experiences at Muhlenberg and Lehigh. Annie and Aidan were the only two film majors in the group, and took leadership straight away. Aidan was well-versed with the Lafayette FAMS department and offered great suggestions on how to set up the scene and Annie knew how to work the editing program. As a photographer (and not a filmmaker), I have lot of experience behind the camera, but I had never worked with microphones or sound before, and it was a really unique experience. Working with a group to come up with a creative project also was interesting because it was about merging all of our visions together to create a final project. Usually when I am solo behind the camera, if I have an idea for an angle or a shot I can just do it. But here, it was all about selling one’s ideas to the others. We truly had to work together and sometimes it was important to just sit back and let other people run the show, which was a new experience as I usually am the more vocal one in other group projects.

My favorite part of the exercise was watching everyone else’s documentaries and seeing how diverse everyone took the topics. Because a lot of us did pets, I assumed they would all be similar, but it was clear everyone had a different vision of what the prompt was asking. Although all the documentaries were entertaining and well-done, I loved the political documentary group because it was so raw and so powerful. It made me want to watch more. I was thankful for Annie and Aidan’s demonstration of how B-roll can be used for creative effect and I was really proud of our overall final product. My role in the group was just to provide ideas for how to integrate everyone’s stories together as I thought up using pet therapy as a way to weave the stories together. It was quite strange for me to be in front of the camera as I am always behind it, and I found myself unable to talk normally while filming (I felt more like I was acting).

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and it got me even more excited about this class and the future opportunities within it!

While framing the world, I thought a lot about the psychological principal of selective attention and how photographs and movies essentially choose where our attention should be put on. Being behind the frame made me realize that sometimes there is a lot more to the world then I can see at one point, and that my experience of the life that I live is just that; my experience. We all physically live in this vast “objective” world, but we actually live in our own version of that world, which is entirely subjective. Looking at the world behind a frame made me want to slow down and “stop and smell the roses” as opposed to hastily rushing everywhere as I normally do. I love sitting in coffee shops and looking out the windows at life that goes by, and this experience felt a lot like that. It is impossible to see everything that happens at once and because of this, in a way, we are always living life while looking through our own version of a cardboard frame.