Week 1, poetic documentary in six modes of documentary

In Nichols’s reading, I found that the order of six modes showed in the way they appeared. This made me realize that poetic documentaries and expository documentaries appeared at the earliest time, while reflective documentaries and performance documentaries gradually appeared at the later stage. 

However, later in this reading,

“The different documentary modes may seem to provide a history of documentary film, but they do so imperfectly. Not only were most of them present from the outset, but also a film identified with a given mode need not be entirely so.”

（Nichols, 2017). In this understanding, the difference in the time of when they’re documented only represents the prevailing culture in different social contexts or reflects the social phenomenon and the development of technology at a certain stage. There is no indication that the subsequent modes are competitive or have been dominated for years.

The film is Samsara, with the same team from Baraka. The reason I reckon it is a Poetic Documentary is that there’s no voice-over. The editing is discontinued, with no logic but used similarly of objects to edit. Long-take and time-lapse techniques are my favorites in this film. the significant sound design made this film notable for being a poetic documentary. As Nichols in his book showed sounds in poetic documentaries is a way to express, and the filmmaker has a high degree of control of the sound.

 

Team members are: Charlotte(me), Julie Tran and Runxin Mao. Sketch length 1:15. The mode of this documentary sketch is poetic. Our original concept is to show the difference and similarity between Julie and Runxin’s hobbies: line dancing and computer dancing.

I’m the editor of this sketch; the characteristics I draw on are discontinuity, the rhythm of music, and the speed-change of the clip. One idea I didn’t achieve is we planned to use mask effect, to show line dancing is happening in the computer monitor; the reason I didn’t achieve is that the clips I got are not stable enough and the found footages have over-expose problem. Next time I may try some color-grading effects(black-and-white, or change saturation) and change of frame rate (from 16:9 to 1:1, or from 2.35:1 to 4:3) to show my understanding in the poetic documentary. 

Reference list:

Nichols, B. 2017, Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition, Indiana University Press, ProQuest Ebook Central,

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=4813367.