In this installment of REVIEWING DOCUMENTARIES WITH JOEL EVANGELISTA! We will be looking at Woodstock, the documentary that followed the events of the largest musical festival in the world. I particularly took interest to this doc, mainly because music is important in my life. The opening sequence, along with the rest of the film, felt like a music video. After doing some research prior to watching the film, I found out that the film was edited by none other than the famous Martin Scorcese. Scorcese took a radical twist to the traditional edit of a documentary, and included split frames, sometimes up to four asymmetrical frames. Live performances from amazing bands, an eccentric edit, accompanied by outrageous interviews made this the award-winning doc that it became.
The first five minutes of the film is strictly music, and the events of the crew scoping out the location of the festival, and setting up the stage. Then it jumps into our first interview with the organizer of the event, it is very informal and right off the bat gives you the vibe of the film, marijuana inspired musical peace concert. Although marijuana and other drugs were present at the festival, and was clearly present by interviews with those watching the show, the event was still organized, and not in any way trying to be nuisance to society. What made the documentary so captivating, besides the great music, was the fact that the short interviews with the fans were intimate, they weren’t set-up locations with fixed lighting, they were on the spot quick interviews.
Overall I found Woodstock to be the most entertaining documentaries I have seen to date. The set-up to the film was an interview with an older man who lived in the county next to the farm where Woodstock was held His testimonial on how well behaved and polite these “hippies” were to the folk in his town will surely show that rock and roll is not the cause of rebellion and anarchy, but the music behind a peaceful people.
Someone was kind enough to put the full movie on the interwebs.
Storage Wars follows the battle between four thrift store owners, Dave, Darrell, Jarrod, his wife Brandi and Barry. These entrepreneurs constantly hunt for storage lockers that have been unattended and are being auctioned. This weeks episode featured an equal split in lockers, and really displayed each character’s personality. By the end of the episode Barry, the oldest of the bunch, came out as the most profitable with a find of antique flare guns.
Interviews were spread across the episode thinly and were only present to comment on what was happening in the story/frame. These guys can really get on each others nerves, and it shows in each and every interview. This doc style show on A&E is more of a “day in the life” / “show and tell” style of story mapping. The camera crew follows the group of thrifters from the storage sites to their respective shops, and is able to capture the intimacy that is the world of the thrift business.
Overall, Storage Wars lives up to the conventional broadcasting doc style set of series. The intimate nature of these shows really goes a long way to help captivate their viewers.
No comments:
Post a Comment