Also, special thanks to Teague for putting 5 R's in Grrrrrl Power, per my request.

I don't think there's much I can say about this episode, apart from it being good and interesting. There is an inherent limitation to the podcast when talking about editing, as there's no way to show examples. Even if we watch the documentary in question, we won't get to see, for example, different ways a scene could have been put together which would change viewer reaction. Hearing her talk about how she edited, though, was great.

As for future episodes, maybe a look at bad ones? A dissection at what didn't work? Or maybe compare two documentaries which tackled the same subject from different directions. Say, a Frontline documentary compared to a polemic. Actually, at look at the Frontline series might be fun, as PBS is what most people think of when they hear the word "documentary".

I've not got round to listening to this episode yet, but I've loved the series as a whole. It's definitely put a lot more documentaries on my radar and the ones I have yet to watch I'm looking forward to seeing.

In terms of how it fits with the others, I see it as being more esoteric than WAYDM and The Intermission and more along the lines of Uncomposed. I think this is both a strength and a weakness; it makes for great in-depth discussion on the topic that fans of documentaries will be all over, but maybe this makes it less accessible to those who aren't as well versed in documentary? Perhaps a simple recommendations episode or something could entice a few more people on board.

Stuff I'd like to hear covered? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've said on a previous show that you're not a fan of docs along the lines of 'Indie Game: The Movie'. That style seems to be pretty popular these days, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on exactly why that is and why that doesn't do it for you. Maybe it could be part of a discussion on trends in documentary throughout the years?

For a specific documentary I'd like to hear you guys talk about, I'd have to go with 'Capturing the Friedmans', simply because it was the film that got me really in to documentaries. It's one of those where after I watched it, I just felt like I had to show it to so many other people.

I didn't like this one as much as the previous ones, for what I think are a couple of reasons. One is that this topic doesn't hold as much interest to me as previous ones, which is fine. Another is that it feels like you used these docs as a frame to interview Jessica, and thus the podcast was more about her and the docs kinda fell by the wayside. While I'm sure Jessica is a very nice gal and worth interviewing, I'd rather the focus was more on the docs themselves.
A sub point to this is that previously when you guys talked about a doc, one of you would give a brief summary of the doc before you got too far into the discussion. This is super handy for someone like me who doesn't watch a lot of docs but likes to listen to you talk about them. In fact, most of the docs I've seen recently I saw because of this show and because the summary caught my interest enough to cause me to go watch it. Somehow those summaries didn't seem to happen this time and as a result I felt very lost for most of the discussion and still don't really know what either of these docs are about.

Just my two cents.

Last edited by ShadowDuelist (2014-05-09 05:02:44)

Awesome you guys.  Thanks so much and feel free to keep it coming.  There are certainly some great points made here, and I think there are ways to satisfy some of this going forward.  I want to keep each episode to have a different feel, either in terms of guests, number of films, and type of analysis.  I'll keep all of this in mind as we move forward.