MDA 1400 – Observational Documentary

For this project we were required to make an observational documentary no more than two minutes long. Though I missed this lesson, I had some basic knowledge of the observational mode, it is far from my favourite (I prefer poetic and performative documentaries such as Baraka or Super Size Me) and I seriously doubted my ability to create an interesting documentary based on these guide lines.

For this project I worked once again with Torstein Jacobsen, though we reversed our previously established roles with myself as director. Given that observational documentaries requires unobtrusive camera work that captures the action without interring with the subject, we knew that we would have to be very particular in our choice of subject as well as our approach to shooting. Like many of our colleagues, we played with a number of a different ideas, discussing variously the possibility of shooting on a bus, in a park, in a restaurant or simply setting up in a public space and seeing what we could find.

At long last, fed up with the interminable brainstorming, we simply settled on choosing a convenient location we knew would be at lease moderately populated and  see what improvisation might bring. In hindsight I feel that I opted for this as I had little enthusiasm for the project and it was a far easier alternative to planning something more in depth. After helping Jaspal as a runner on his own observational documentary, I went about shooting mine in the Quadrangle at university.

While improvisation can often lead to  chance occurrences and unexpected developments, in my particular case it did not. At all. As I had failed to properly consider and define my subject ahead of time, I was left aimlessly shooting anything that caught my interest. This led to difficulty in post-production as Torstein and I attempted to fashion some narrative or continuity out of what had been filmed.

Though I missed the lesson in which the films were screened, I gained a vital insight into where I had gone wrong by watching Jaspal’s observational documentary and recalling the difference between our methods. Whereas he had clearly developed at least some type of plan and had an idea of the story he wanted to tell that involved a kind of positive forward momentum, I had completely failed to consider my film theoretically. All in all, though I believe I met the brief I am largely unsatisfied with the finished piece but I have gained an importance lesson in the relationship between theory and practice.