'The Archive' and 'Pockets'

In this week's seminar we watched some short documentaries so that we could get an idea of the type of film we would be making for this project. The two that I found the most interesting were Sean Dunne's 'The Archive' and James Lees' 'Pockets'. This is because both have used elements of a stylistic approach to make their piece more visually interesting than the average documentary. Each film uses elements of different approaches to the way the piece is made, however both are an inspiration to the piece I would like to make for this project.


The Archive by Sean Dunne

The Archive is a short documentary about Paul Mawhinney and his vinyl record archive worth over $50 million. The film follows Paul and his struggle to sell the collection as "no one gives a damn" about records anymore due to the rise in CDs and digital music downloads.

This piece is very interesting as it uses elements of a typical documentary but also includes a lot of constructed shots to give it a stylistic effect.

Using shots of the main character in an interview setting saying a piece to camera is typical of this genre of film, however Lees has done this in a specific way so that the audience does not just focus on the person in the shot. The shot is framed so that the interviewee, Paul, is on the far right of the shot so that at least half of the frame is filled with the background. In the background we can see all the aisles of records that Paul is talking about as the cinematographer has used a deep depth of focus so that it is all clearly visible to the audience.

One of the more stylistic elements is the way that most of the cutaways have been shot. An example of this is the way the film uses tracking shots to show the many aisles of records in the archive. Another example of the use of a stylistic approach is the way that all the lights in the archive are turned off at the end of the piece. This has been done to symbolise the way that the records in Paul's collection will be forgotten about if no one buys them.


The symbolism of the lights is used to connect with the emotion of the piece as it makes the audience really understand how much this all means to Paul, therefore when he gets upset, this then gets an emotional reaction out of the audience. Another way that the emotion is reflected in the film's form is the music used for the piece. At the start the music is very upbeat and happy as the piece has quite a comedic element to it, however as the film goes on, the music gets slower and more emotive as the content becomes more serious. Towards the end of the film there is over a minute where we do not
hear anyone talking and there is just music playing. This accompanies a shot of Paul getting upset whilst listening to the lyrics as it was his "life song".

Another interesting feature that has been used in this piece is that we see the same shot repeated several times throughout the film. This is a close up shot of a record being played, however each time we see it, a new song starts playing, representing a new section of the film.



Pockets by James Lees

Pockets is a very short documentary which consists of people holding items that they found in their pockets. They then describe the item and what it means to them.

This style of documentary is very interesting as only part of most the people being interviewed is in the shot. This is very different to a typical documentary as the interviews are not framed like a typical interview, instead we only see part of their face and their hands.

The shots of the hands in this piece are all very similar, with the hands open and holding their object. The depth of field in those shots is very shallow. This shows that the audience has no knowledge of what the item is or what it means to them, unless the owner decides to tell them.

The music in this piece is consistent throughout the film. It's a very mellow track, which gets louder when there is no one talking. By lowering the volume whilst people are being interviewed, this makes it easier for the audience to hear the interviewee describing their item, but also means that the music in the background is always present. When making my documentary I will keep this in mind if I decide to include music.