Nixon's Resignation

This speech was very interesting. At first the camera shot was wide view, they were very far away. As the speech went on they shot got closer and closer, and at the very end they continue to pan inward. It was as if the camera person wanted you to notice Nixon's disposition and the feeling he was putting into his speech. He looked very confident in the beginning, but at the end looked as if he was going to break down. Zooming in on this showed Nixon's feelings and showed every expression he was making very close up. Nixon held his speech in front of him for the entire speech, and in the beginning you were able to see it because of camera angle. At the end, all you could see was Nixon's face. This being on film was very interesting for the world could see Nixon's resignation as it was. They showed the raw resignation film for the whole world to see, as the very first president to ever resign was doing so, and doing so for a very controversial reason.

Richard Nixon - "Checkers" Speech

In this clip we see Nixon trying to defend himself against the allegations that were made that he was a bad person. They are at medium shot length, and it was filmed in black and white. The lack of color makes it seem very vintage. Nixon is clearly reading off a speech for he keeps looking down to see what to say next. The fact that he does this makes it very hard to trust what he is saying. For, instead of just speaking he needs to read off a script. The camera stays at the same shot length the entire time, and this seems to be important. Instead of getting close up, they chose to stay far away. At this shot you can see Nixon's body movement, and he does a lot of it. He moves his hands much and often moves his entire body as he is talking. With the camera at medium shot point they can get this entire movement. The camera also does not move, as to focus on what Nixon is saying. If it was to move in close you would focus also on his face, to see what kind of emotion he has.

Nixon & Watergate

In this clip, Nixon is clearly angry. He is talking with much conviction and he is very passionate about what he is saying. This seems to be the first time Nixon is actually candid. In all his speeches he has something to read off of, and knows exactly what he is going to say. In the Frost Nixon interviews Frost was ultimately in control of what was going to happen. Nixon did now know what exactly Frost was going to ask, and had to prepare himself for the worst. In this clip we see Nixon trying to defend himself saying he was not trying to cover anything up. Later in the interview he states that if he wanted to cover it up he could have easily. This interview was very interesting, they should both the reactions of Nixon and Frost as Nixon was talking. Yet, when they should Frost they were at medium view, and with Nixon they were very close up. It was as if they wanted the American people to be able to judge for themselves if Nixon was telling the truth. In other parts of the interview he is much more relaxed, but when the issue of the cover up is brought up they get very close on Nixon, and he gets riled up.

Reality T.V articles

The first reality television article was very interesting. The fact that the reality t.v shows were grouped into categories was good. I've never seen groups such as these before. I have always thought of reality television as one big large group, not as small groups sectioned off.

It makes sense to group them like this, for there are different types of reality television. One of the most common is the competitive reality television shows where they are playing for some kind of reward at the end. This could consist of love, money, or fame. One of the most common examples of this would be fear factor. They have to do very disgusting things in order to acquire money in the end. Another type of reality television category is transformation. In this either people, or other things are transformed by the end of the television show. An example of this is extreme makeover home edition, where they make over an entire house in a week. Or, the biggest loser. This is transformer peoples bodies so they can become healthier.

Sherman's March

Sherman's March was another very interesting documentary. At first you think it is going to be all about the historic Sherman's March, but in the end it turns out to be much of Ross McElwee's journey. He starts out searching for love and stumbles upon a woman named Pat. Now the beginning seems to be all about Pat, and McElwee seems to make most of the beginning about her endeavors. He uses the camera at very interesting angels when he is filming Pat, and often keeps it directly on her. Pat then gets an audition and leaves McElwee and he seems to be starting his original idea, and going back to the actual Sherman's March. This documentary has many masculine conquests the biggest being his romantic conquest. In the beginning his mother tries to set him up with people and that is where he ultimately meets Pat. It seems he feels as if he is incomplete without a woman in his life. Another small conquest could be his car. When Pat is not around to film, he often goes and works on his car, although he does not film this. This would be one of his smaller conquests, and only a side job for when Pat is not present.

London

London was made by Patrick Keiller in 1992. This documentary was very interesting to say the least, and it was very confusing. It had voice of God narration, and was observational but you do not see the people they were referring to. The images often did not match the narration. For at one point they were talking about Romanticism and had a very long shot on McDonald's. He was talking about where he can always go to get things done and before had been talking about Romanticism. When you think about Romanticism McDonald's is the very last thing that would come to mind. He also used medium shots, and stayed on the subject for a very long period of time. Often the subject would change before the actual picture would. The documentary did not focus on the traditional tour sites of London, but instead focused on parts the two characters had been and had experienced very normal things.

This documentary was actually really weird. I did not really like it, and did not fully understand what the purpose was. It seemed to put a negative light on London, which is not usually the case when someone is doing a documentary on a place.

Ric Burns

Ric Burns was a very interesting presentation. It was nice to see a man who makes documentaries so laid back, and so willing to talk to all of us and make jokes. It was really interesting to hear him talk about the whole process, and why he was starting his next documentary. I did not quite understand at first what would compel someone to write a documentary on whale hunting. After he talked about it, it really started to make sense and I saw that it is actually a very interesting topic. The part of the documentary he showed us was actually really interesting. He had a lot of interviews with many people which made all the stories seem so much more believable. I liked that he focused on the one boat that never returned, and after watching I would have loved to watch the rest. He left you in suspense and led up to what would actually happen with the boat in the end. It was nice that he first described the significance of whale hunting and what it was used for in the older days. What I was thinking during the documentary is where did he get the footage of all the boats at sea? Was this old footage or did he actually go on location and shoot this?

7-up

7 Up was a very interesting documentary. I liked it a lot. This type of documentary is known as a "journey documentary" for it followed the teens through their lives. The up documentaries are really interesting and after watching 7 Up I would have liked to watch the others to see what would have happened to these children. 7 Up seemed to focus on economic status for all the children. In the interviews that are done they are grouped by their school, and that ultimately means they are grouped by their status. As the children grow older they seem to have some of the same beliefs as when they were younger. It appears as if growing up in a certain community can alter a children beliefs and what they are going to achieve in life. With journey documentaries you can see where life takes people, and the different factors that can affect ones life.

San Soleil

San Soleil was a very interesting documentary. At first it was very hard to understand, but now that i think about it the main focus was on memory. It was a woman narrating travels, although it seemed as if she was very disoriented. The story went from Japan, to animals doing very dirty things. It was kind of hard to follow.

A lot of the time the images that were playing in the background did not match the voice over of the woman. It makes you think was this done on purpose, for a specific meaning. Was Marker trying to say that at times our memory of the words that were said do not fit the specific images we associate them with, or rather that we misconstrue memories to match the words we want them to?

Another interesting fact was that Marker used Japan as a main focus. Why would Japan need to be a focus of his documentary? Possibly it is because Japan's culture is so different than that of the Americans, or the French. Japan is not often studied openly and there is little information about the festivals like the ones shown in the documentary.

The narrator in San Soleil is a female. For many documentaries the narrator is a male, with a very strong voice. The female in this film also had a very strong voice, but it was also calming at the same time. It was as if he used this for a reason, to make you really listen and think about the things this woman was saying.

Salesman

Salesman was the first documentary of the direct cinema movement. It followed a group of Bible salesman while they went about their day selling the Bible. As the film went on it focused on one man more than the others, and that was Paul. Paul was the oldest seller, and the film slowed his slow decline as a salesman and his frustration with the process. At the end of the film it is left open what happens with Paul, but it can be inferred that he was going to be fired in the near future. Paul could not get many more sales when he used to be able to get a lot.

The film was interesting because it showed real life people, doing their job. It looked as if the camera rarely interfered with things, but then again how could it not. A man was coming into your house to sell a bible with a camera crew. It was very interesting to see the people in the town open their houses no matter what they were doing. Many of them were in their pajamas and did not look as if they would want to be on film.

The use of direct cinema allowed the Maysles brothers to capture the men as they really were. While they were in between selling bibles you often saw them smoking and drinking, which was odd since they were bible salesman. It opened up your eyes to the things people do when no one is aware of them.

Edgar Barnes

In Barne's documentary he focused on prisons and the new hospice program that is coming to them. In the opening scene of his documentary he used a man named Jack, talking about why he was sent to jail and his story. The entire documentary then follows Jack as he is diagnosed with an illness and is going to the hospice program. There are many interviews with the staff, and one long segment of a woman talking about the hospice program and the benefits of having one in a prison. There is no outside narration in the documentary, but Barnes does use words on the screen at times in between segments. At times there is absolutely no words being said, not even an interview with the patients, the scene speaks for itself. Take for example a man trying to get into his bed, and having a very long struggle with it. It shows a very independent man struggling to do simple daily things, it proves that there is a need for hospice, so the patients can be helped. They would be able to get assistance, and it would be from their fellow prisoner.

Harvey Milk and World at War

World at War was an informative documentary. It used a narrator and archival images to get the point across. The documentary was on WWI, and focused on genocide. Genocide in this documentary was seen as subjective, and there was room for your own interpretation of the events as you were watching the film. In the film there was a narrator, but he was never seen. He talked over the clips, or in between them to explain what was happening within the documentary. The narrator would go from instructive narration to moralizing, trying to explain what was essentially going on in the war.



The times of Harvey Milk was a persuasive documentary. There was much archival footage and most of it was of Milk as a very happy individual. It showed him being content with his life, and loving every minute of it. This documentary used voice of God narration. The narrator talked over the clips, and was never seen. He is to be omniscient and ultimately be like a figure above all others. There was no interviews with experts in this documentary, and it was all footage of Milk himself.

Millhouse

Millhouse was all about president Nixon, and his presidency. This was shot pre-watergate, and ultimately influenced future campaigns. In the beginning of the film it starts slightly creepy, with a dummy of Nixon. It immediately gives the impression that de Antonio clearly did not like Nixon, and thought he was not intelligent. Throughout the film we saw clips of Nixon, and many of the things he said and did that were not the brightest. It gave an automatic negative image of Nixon, and made him out to be a bad man. This impacted future campaigns because the manipulation of film is what made him look so bad. De Antonio chose clips that portrayed Nixon in a negative light to get his point across. Today this can be seen among many campaigns, there are often slander campaigns against the persons opponent. There are commercials showing everything one person is doing wrong within their campaign. A lot of damage can be done to a persons reputation if there is enough manipulation of the film.

De Antonio does a good job of using the right clips to get his point across. He makes Nixon look like a fool through his entire documentary. Since this was pre-watergate, many people at the time were in favor of Nixon. After watergate this film was most likely looked at in a different light, for people were very anti-Nixon after watergate.

In the Year of the Pig

In the year of the pig was a very interesting documentary. It wanted to show the events leading up to when the Americans got involved in the Vietnam war. This was a very controversial issue, for many people were against our involvement in Vietnam. The documentary was synchronous and nonsynchronous. At many times they showed an image and then had a person talking about those said images. At one point in time they just ran footage of the leaders in Vietnam, Diem and Madam Nu, and merely let the images speak for themselves. They ran footage of them in interviews, and addressing the nation and let people gather their own opinions. The footage was mostly displayed them in a negative light. For the one clip of the Madam was her addressing the nation and sounding very self absorbed, and quite mean. She sounded as if she put herself above all others. The documentary seemed to show a stereotype of how Americans think of Asian women, and the Asian race. The narration was against voice of God, and most of the time had clips running with people talking in them.

This video is proof that the camera is a male eye. It shows a woman and her husband and while she is running up the stairs stripping, he thinks they are going to the bedroom. What he does not know is that she is heading to the bathroom. There is really no need for there to be any sexual connotation in a shampoo commercial. However, herbal essences took the opportunity to put sex into their commercial. We see this woman in the shower making very provocative noises, as if she was getting pleasured. I highly doubt any woman would ever put this in a commercial. It is very personal, and belittling. It makes it seem like the man only wanted his wife for that reason, for the only time he started paying attention to her is when she started running up the stairs taking off her clothing. The male eye often makes woman objects of lust and sex, and shows them in very sexual settings, such as this commercial.

Point of Order

Point of Order was a very interesting movie. The clips they showed from the trial provided a lot of information from what happened at the whole trial. Emile de Antonio did a good job of picking out the right footage from the hours he had to chose from. He started out showing one side, then would give glimpses of the rebuttal and the other points. He did a good job of showing how both sides felt, but yet left room for others to interpret what they thought should have been done.

McCarthy often went off saying he had names of those who were communists, yet never provided any proof. In class we mentioned how it was like a witch hunt, and it really was. He would go off and say he knew the names of many people that were communists but could never prove it. He never provided the list, and never said why he thought they were. In the witch trials there was never a way to prove that those women were witches. In a sense McCarthy was a witch hunter.

Those who followed McCarthy probably found safety in his words, thinking they would never want a communist in control of their government or army. They thought he would never lie to them, and was coming out with the truth to out the government. Point of Order essentially showed the world what was really going on behind closed doors with the McCarthy trial. The montage video of the trial showed the highlights of what was a very long trial.

Zapruder Film & Rodney King

Within the last couple of years a new form of film has come out, and that is the "accidental" video. We see this with the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. With the accidental film we moments captured that may not have meant to be significant until an event happen. We see this with the Zapruder film, seeing the president was significant but nobody knew that he was going to get shot that day. Zapruder was merely filming an important part in history to document it for himself and happened to catch an extraordinary event. The Zapruder film soon became very popular, and was studied numerous times to try and figure out what had happened on that day.

Many people can remember the exact place they were when they find information out, but if they do not see it first hand it can impact them differently. Many people can remember where they were on the day of 9/11, but seeing that second plane crash into the tower, changes everything. It makes you feel that the event is truly real, and can never be changed. The same is connected with the Rodney King beating. Someone caught the police beating him when he was pulled over, which was disturbing on so many different. This video soon became very important evidence in the case against the police and Rodney King.

"Accidental" film can often be vital to many different things surrounding the event that was captured. It often enhances a persons flash bulb memory, and essentially proves that the event took place. It also gives an every lasting account of what exactly happened.

Hearing the News vs. being there

This week we ready Hearing the News vs. being there by David P. Pillemer. This reading was all about flashbulb memories and how things can be different depending on if you witness them on the news or if you actually take place in the action in person. Along with the reading we had a student come in and disrupt class to see what we as students remembered through the experience. We saw through this that even if you are there you cannot remember all the events that happened in order.

Many people can connect better to a situation if it will affect them personally. For all of us in class the boy that disrupted did not personally affect any of us. It did not strike a cord that would emotionally damage or cause any change in any of the students present. The boy simply disrupted class, and showed an attitude not many of us had seen in class before. As we presented what we thought had happened in those 5 minutes it was clear which parts stuck out to all of us: the swearing. The boys foul language stuck out the most, and the fact that he was blatantly texting in the middle of class. Much of the lecture and the interaction between the professor and the boy was forgotten or mixed up.

Most of the time if an event personally affects us personally, directly impacts us, or we are in the very heart of the conflict we will remember the exact details. For example my brother passed away last July, i remember every event of that day perfectly. I can remember where I was when things happened, and exactly how i felt at that moment. Other flashbulb memories include the twin towers collapsing, i can remember exactly where I was when i received those messages. Things that affect a person so deeply and personally tend to stick with them longer.
Me and my brother the Christmas before he passed away.