So Malcolm was ill today so I made the most of my time by organising my blog and adding new posts (mostly of my MM&I shoots, which are still drafts so expect them up soon!). Just wondering what will happen to the session timetable- will he do this weeks lecture next week, which seems logical? Will we be behind?
Di's session however was still on. Today we looked at The Origins of Documentary.
- empirical knowledge - knowledge acquired by means of the senses.
There are three models of realism; Critical, Direct and Representational.
- Critical- takes into account independent reality and also perception. Basically this means you look at the options of what you know and what you have been told and evaluate the two to create a reality.
- Direct - what you see is what you get. Also known as 'naive realism', this does not take into account what you have been told. You judge on what you see only.
- Representational - can't perceive it as it really is. Only know ideas you have been told. Basically this is our relationship with the news. We aren't actually on the other side of the world. We trust the newsreaders to tell us the truth and realism.
http://www.zingzoo.com/2015/04/13/an-australian-newsreader-has-perfectly-shut-down-the-ice-bucket-challenge/
- content analysis - see if news people say the same thing. See what is true.
Realism acts as a ripple effect.
Original truth → Documentarist → Editing → Audience
Each one gets filtered and changed. The documentarist chooses what to film. The editor chooses what to include. All for the biggest impact.
Charles Baudelaire was one of the first people to paint the underclass for a reason. He said to paint them rather than something historical or biblical.
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/biblical-gif
"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvellous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvellous; but we do not notice it." - Charles Baudelaire
His images were used to campaign to the upper classes for change to the lower class.
Metropolis does this perfectly with it's allegory of the 'thinkers and the workers', portraying the divide in classes. And also how the machine 'eats' the workers showing how much they are overworked and the influence of the upper class.
http://so-dishy.com/2013/06/10/920/
Documentary in France used to mean any non-fiction film including travelogues and instructional films. The term 'documentary' as first applied to Moana (Robert Fatherty).
Documentaries according to Griesson are "aesthetically innovative and socially instructive". They are mostly made to inform, educate, question, challenge and provoke. But who says they can't entertain? Or be visually pleasing?
Triumph of the Will was originally made to be a documentary but ended up being one of the most famous propaganda films ever made. We also looked briefly at March of the Penguins which was a hit, having similar emotions and morals to human beings; the nuclear family, monogamy as well as the darker side of prostitution and killing off eggs/babies.
http://www.sopawsome.com/12-hilarious-penguin-gifs/
