Documentaries, School Trips, Short films: What the hell, sure

 If i had to describe to you my 1st semester of senior year it would be like playing basically like Five Nights at Freddys. I almost felt like every week I had a new responsibility put upon me.

That being said, as I entered the second level of media studies, one of the first genres we explored was that of the documentary. 

We started by watching 2 episodes of Netflix’s show “Abstract” . The two episodes we watched were actually very interesting and it showed me a new style of creating a documentary, using graphics to explain concepts when visuals for the thing being explained aren't available. I think the main thing that I learned from watching those two episodes was the importance of B-Roll and how it can shape the tone of the documentary.

Theres a huge difference between just listening to the documentary and watching the documentary. The visuals end up informing a lot of what you can take away from it and the opinions that you can form on the subject matter

The next documentary which we watched in class was American Promise.This documentary was by far the most unique of the 3 we were assigned to watch, as it was filmed over a 13 year time span, documenting basically two entire childhoods. What stuck out to me about this selection was its dedication to truly document life. Unlike abstract, this one almost felt like a drama film, it wasn’t just someone explaining their passions or motives, It was much more in action, which I really liked about it.

The last documentary I actually had to watch coming back home from a competition trip in new york (shoutout all american highschool film festival) with my good friend nico. I had downloaded the documentary before boarding the plane, and this definitely did a good job of shaking the travel shivers out of me.

Selfie from when we arrived back home

I think the main reason I ended up loving it so much was because the documentary in question, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was the editing style. Up until that point I had for the most part percieved most documentaries as slow. This one changed all that by being quickly edited, and correctly pacing the story that Banksy (the director) was trying to tell within the documentary. I really admire its style especially when it came to the editing.