DocSub has the right of this.  A minimalist visual style does not mean lack of effort or skill.  If you think all Laura Poitras did was turn a camera on and point it, then all you're doing is demonstrating 1) a lack of cinematic vocabulary and 2) a myopic view of what Documentaries should accomplish.

I started Documentality to dispel this very idea.  Docs are NOT educational films.  They are not journalism (in fact the IDA just hosted a huge symposium on this YESTERDAY, saying roughly what I am now).  A docs job is not to make your broccoli taste better.  A docs worth is not demonstrated by  the efficiency it displays in making learning fun.  If that's how you rate them, then Reading Rainbow is the greatest documentary ever.  A documentary film, before anything else, is cinema.  It's job is the same as any other film you see, whether its Jupiter Ascending or Paddington: to tell you a story and present it through audio and visuals in a way that aligns thematically with the story itself.  Hopefully if its done well it resonates with you.  I always harp on the Lectern Test in Documentality as a way to gauge if Docs are taking advantage of cinematic tools to present its story.  You're actively saying you would prefer a Lectern Doc on this subject matter than heavy directorial hand that Laura Poitras demonstrates, and that you marginalize with your criticism. 

I know I'm being super harsh here, Avatar.  Please understand that I'm not trying to ether you, so much as I am this disturbingly widespread assumption of documentary directorial technique that you have.  There's far more many ways to skin a cat when it comes to Doc directing, and I just wish you wouldn't confuse form for content.

I think part of the problem is we need a name for films that ARE that.

I take your point about documentaries not being merely educational, and that they are 'cinema'. But that just underscores my point. The vérité style is not cinematic... just to leave one cheap camera locked off, pointing in one direction. Any one of us placed in that hotel room could have done a similar job. You don't have to think about camera angles, lighting, framing, grading, lenses, depth of field, and all the dozens of others aspects a cinematic director has to consider. John Maloof had to work hard to make a potential boring subject interesting (myriad time lapses, flying to Europe, archival research).
Poitras had an 'easy sell' because the Snowden story sells itself.

Imagine, you took your video camera in your Delorean to:
1. The trial of Socrates in Classical Athens
2. Assassination of Julius Caesar
3. Crucifixion of Christ
4. Shakespeare writing Hamlet.
5. Signing of the Declaration of Independence
6. Captain Cook's first contact with Polynesians / Australian Aborigines

These events are so momentous that you need to make very little effort to produce a sensational documentary. Your footage can be slightly blurry, unimaginatively composed, underlit, etc - but the events remain fascinating in their own right. Any bozo could do it, as that shit gonna sell itself.

Imagine, by contrast, you are working for the BBC Natural History Unit, and your boss tells you 'make a documentary about grass'. You're going to have to employ every iota of your documentarian skills to sell that mofo. You'll need to depict the molecular reactions that drive photosynthesis with cutting edge 3D modelling, have Stephen Fry narrate, get Zimmer to compose, travel globally to compare grass species, construct fancy time-lapse bullet-time sequences of grass growing, etc.

And in the end, it's never going to be as compelling as the shitty one-angle footage of Thomas Jefferson, but the skills to make grass growing even mildly interesting are going to be more worthy of a greater documentarian.

First, I couldn't tell that was a link until I quoted it just now

Second, I just deleted my reply. Instead I'll ask if NOVA is a documentary series, or an educational film series. I need to get our definitions straight

I was JUST about to type Dogma 95, but Doc Sub beat me to it.  Same goes with a film like Barry Lyndon.  Incredible cinematic technique in a film that is mostly one camera lock offs.  It's like saying, "well there's twice as many cuts in film x versus film y, so film x is better edited."  Hogwash.  Again, and man I'm kinda gonna sound dickish saying this, but I think watching a wider variety of docs will benefit your understanding of what Directing actually, IS. 

Gates of Heaven
Vernon, Florida
The War Room
My Brothers Keeper

Those are four docs off the top of my head that have a minimalist style, but immense skill.

If that's truly ALL you believe she did, then you and I are simply never going to see eye to eye on this.  Your assumptions of her process demonstrate a fundamental lack of knowledge about directing film in general and documentary in specific.  You're also taking editing out of consideration, which the director has a huge hand in.  I would recommend the episode of The Treatment w/ Elvis Mitchell where Laura is a guest and goes on in length about the process, or if you can find any one of her Q&A's from the IDA about the film.  Maybe if you actually heard it from her own mouth you'd think more of her.

I agree with that sentiment to an extent (particularly with non-documentary filmmaking), but you've also got to qualify for the situation here. Like, I sincerely doubt that a filmmaker risking being arrested for abeting an enemy of the state was in any position to fly 100s of lbs of camera and lighting gear to Hong Kong. It seems ridiculous to knock someone risking their life to document something that crazy with almost no time to plan for not doing elaborate lighting setups.

This is the key difference, yeah. It just wasn't a level playing field.

Every moment Poitras spent communicating with Snowden, receiving information from him, meeting with him --  every moment of that put her at serious risk of being prosecuted. And not being prosecuted for jaywalking, either. That matters. Obviously, yeah, it means she probably can't haul around tons of equipment for elaborate lighting setups (which, I mean, duh), but it also means she did what she did under enormous pressure. Fact is, the Justice Department wasn't hot to prosecute Maloof for making his Maier doc (a film I adored just as much). She wasn't just making a doc about Snowden; she was literally documenting her own (technically) criminal conduct.

I don't know for sure, but I reckon something has to do with the pure nature of them being all CG. They can perfect each single shot individually, as they don't exactly have to reshoot.

Watched Kingsman last night. Though I'd enjoy it from the cast, premise seemed a bit too silly to me from the trailers, but apparently I hadn't accounted for it basically being a British film. I loved it, even when the last act flipped the switch from taking the spy movie premise seriously to a more lighthearted homage to the genre.

Also, someone really likes wide angle lenses. I can describe two shots the next day that used them (both with strong center framing and should-be-vertical lines) and know there are a few more I'm forgetting. Oh, and entire sequence with a dynamic camera that was probably wide-angle as well.

I knew the reviews were poor, but I watched it anyway as a comparison to Noah and to see some "spectacle". Everyone thought this was "meh" and they're right. You'd expect a good ol' Biblical epic to piss off the Christians, Jews, Atheists, etc, but the only minor controversy it stirred up was in casting white people.

In the Golden Age of Hollywood, such a story would entail a 400 day shoot, massive cost over-runs, cast of thousands, cutting edge VFX, production of a lifetime, etc. But this was more akin to a B-movie like Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii.

Ridley Scott knocked this movie out in 74 days without breaking sweat.

I heard the audio commentary and, like Prometheus, it makes fascinating listening. Scott is completely unaware that few people like his late oeuvre. He seems to live in a bubble where criticism doesn't reach. He's constantly congratulating himself on a job well done, delivering his commentary in a gruff bluster e.g. "I've got the vision, and you just have to get behind me, don't question it, and go with it", "looks great doesn't it?" I was astonished how casually he treated the subject: most of his statements about Ancient Egypt were factually wrong. He prides himself on how many camera set-ups he can knock over in a day. No need for more than 2-3 takes. Two plants and a rock will do for this scene: just film it. And so on. And it shows: his legendary attention to detail (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator) has long gone. Now it's just a production assembly line cranking out substandard fare. "Cut! let's move on, don't worry about it, put the camera over there, quickly now, and.. Action!"

I recommend the audio commentary as a study in autocratic megalomania.

Last edited by avatar (2015-03-23 09:52:47)