Documentary Analysis
5/2/22
Super Size Me
This
documentary is available on youtube in two parts and its free on
prime. Morgan Spurlock directed the documentary and he directed the One
Direction documentary in 2013 and another super size me in 2017. This
documentary was released in 2004 and lasts around an hour and 38
minutes. The story is told by interviewing a few people in the health
sector and the public who experience going to MacDonalds quite a few
times just to get an idea of how unhealthy people can be. They add some
archived footage of old MacDonalds and MacDonalds nutrient pages. I did
know before watching the documentary that MacDonalds is very bad for you
when consumed everyday and your heart will not be able to take that
much fast food and your respiratory will decrease due to the amount of
fat in the food.
The documentary is structured by days so throughout the documentary we are told about each day and how Morgan was getting on in his journey. The documentary also showed us some health problems which come to what Morgan was doing to his body. There are many different camera angles and shots used in the documentary such as low angle when he is eating and establishing shots when they visit a different restaurant. The interviews are used to understand how your body reacts to eating quite a lot of unhealthy, fried food. This documentary did have a big impact on me as I have stopped the amount of MacDonalds I was eating or I lowered the size of the meal which also means I spend less money.
He
got two awards for the documentary which were the Writers Guild of
America Award and the Satellite for Best Motion Picture, Documentary.
The documentary recieved mixed feelings but the it did what it was made
for and made people re-think their eating habits but I do think people
don't want to hear the truth and were quite annoyed that this happened
because they feel what they don't know, won't hurt them. I didn't like
when they showed the disgusting parts (vomitting) but I suppose it does
fit into showing what consuming a large amount of fast food. I liked the
regular check ups of his health just to see what exactly is happening
to him. I would say I found going to archived footage while someone was
talking was a good idea and I was thinking about using those techniques
in my documentary because I would like some link to what the interviewee
is saying and the film examples they talk about.
This documentary is trying to solve a main cause of obesity in Americans. The presenter/narrators name is Morgan Spurlock and I don't think he went overboard with the preparations because he got advice from different types of doctors such as a nutritionist. Morgan is interviewing people on the streets as opposed to 'experts' because those people have lifestyles of eating MacDonald's quite a lot and they share their opinions on the matter. I think this documentary is being filmed by someone behind the camera but also there are points where Morgan films himself when he's at home or in a MacDonald's. Around the 22 minute mark Morgan has finished his super sized meal and he feels incredibly stuffed and ill which causes him to throw up. I would say this is a turning point because it was the first time he got asked if he wanted a super sized meal and he didn't react to it well. From that point to 25 minutes there were 18 archived videos and photos and I was shocked at how many fast food restaurants there were and how the amount of people are overweight.
One doctor caught my attention when he explained that now its socially acceptable to hector smokers but when it comes to do the same to someone who's eating a lot its frowned upon. Some people see hectoring those who are eating a lot more than we are required to as saving them from themselves. I would say to conclude this documentary that it was a very good idea to make many people wonder what these fast foods do to our body and what really is one of main causes of obesity.
Fyre Festival
This
documentary is available to watch on Netflix and YouTube have a few
clips of the it as well on their platform. Chris Smith directed the
documentary and i feel he did a good job with the structure by starting
off with how the idea accumilated and what happened after Fyre festival,
and more problems it caused for Billy McFarland. Chris Smith made a
documentary about Jim Carey which was made in 2017 and another about the
College Admission Scandal which was made in 2021. The documentary was
released in 2019 and the documentary is an hour and 37 minutes long. The
purpose of the documentary is to show how disastrous the festival was
and to make it known that it should never happen again.
The
story is told through the people that worked on the festival and worked
beside Billy. They told how they got involved and what they thought
they were getting into then it turned out to be a massive scam. I didn't
know anything about this festival prior to watching the documentary but
it seems as if they go into great detail about the incident. The
interviews are used as a narrative to describe how it fell apart and
they used a lot close ups of the interviewees faces when they start
talking about something dramatic that happend with setting up Fyre
festival. Archived footage was used because Billy McFarland wanted the
process of Fyre festival to be documented and there was loads of footage
that hadn't be used.
It
had quite a bit of an impact on me which was it brought up a different
view of festivals in my head. I do think that it didn't have much of an
impact in the fact that I didn't know it happened and it seemed like it
was going to be a disaster from the start but everyone was really
blinded by greed. The documentary was emmy nominated for Oustanding
Directing for a Documentary/ Nonfiction programme. It was also nominated
for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction programme and Oustanding
Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction programme. There wasn't anything that I
didn't like but I do think it could improve on the scene behind the
interview I didn't think they correlated with the topic of documentary. I
did learn from the documentary that everything will be found and there
isn't much point in hiding information and being suspicious because in
the end someone will find out and will tell people.
This expository documentary was about the festival that ended up being a disaster. The content provided in this documentary was well put together as they had documented every part of the journey. The interviews did help with the continuation of the documentary and related to the footage that was being shown while they were talking. I think this documentary was a good idea because those who weren't around at that time wouldn't have known what happened and something like this could happen in the future but it could be worse. This documentary does fit in the expository type as they have archived footage and uses narration to inform the viewer. The structure of this documentary is well planned out as it goes straight from the beginning of the idea of Fyre festival and shows the background of Billy McFarland and his business parter co-founder of Fyre festival, Ja rule.
24/5/22
Discovering Film: Discovering Fred Astaire
This series can be seen on sky arts and on YouTube. The series was produced by Lyndy Saville and Dominic Saville. Lyndy directed all of the Discovery Film series and Shakespeare: The Legacy. This documentary episode takes 46 minutes and was release in February 26, 2014. d the documentary episode is about Fred Astaire's life and what he went through and his rise to fame. It talks about his co-stars; Ginger Rogers, how he treated his co-stars and his work ethics. It also talks about what films he did before he passed away.
The purpose of this documentary is just to highlight how much of a genius and amazing dancer Fred Astaire was and just to explain his career to those who wouldn't know much about him, and who would like to know more. The documentary starts off with how he came to love dance and what his early career was like and just from a young age she wanted to dance. He was brilliant at it and his sister was seen as a one to become a star yet as you can tell it went that Fred Astaire was someone to become a star. It's told through film critics and archived footage of Fred Astaire or photos of Fred sthat portrayed his love of dance and there's pictures of the young Fred with his sister.
I did know about Fred Astaire through watching films and a few other documentaries but this documentary definitely brings light to how Fred Astaire came to be and it made me much more interested in his life his career. Films such as Top Hat and Daddy Long Legs were very good comedies and Top Hat definitely was the film that brought me more interested in Fred Astaire and it's very much a film that you would watch on a rainy afternoon or evening. There is some charm that came with Fred Astaire's character that you just love with it and the whole confusion in the film was a great twist and the ending was perfect. It's a typical 1930's musical number at the end but I do think it worked very well with the film.
The interviews are used to describe Mr Astaire's life and his career. The use of film critics for the interview was a good idea as they know about the lives of these Golden Age of Hollywood stars. There are a lot of archived footage they correlate with what the interviewees are talking about and they have found a lot of old photos of Mr Astaire when he was a child, which I would have thought would be very hard to track down. This documentary episode did have an impact on me, as it made me more interested in Fred Astaire and his films. I did want to start tap dancing after watching his films and the documentary but it didn't happen. It also made an impact in my career choice, from just the edit of this documentary it increased my interest in film.
I didn't like voiceovers that were used when a picture came up to describe more of Fred Astaire's life the voice sounds very robotic and I think to improve it they should have used a normal voice without the effect. I did like the use of archived footage it made the documentary feel more complete and not boring because if they didn't have those footage the documentary would have been less enjoyable. I do like the close-up on the interviewees face, and I might use that technique in my documentary.