Extra Credit #2

Panel: Documentary as Scholarship: Theory, Practice, Context {Documentary as Research} Speaker: Charles Musser (Yale) and a panelDate: 11/18/14

“The future depends on research.” This is the note that just received in my last seminar lecture. Research, whether it is in sciences or humanities or any field, is the vision (or at least the spark of vision) that the world needs in order to create innovation. Research done in order to garner ideas on how to prevent something from happening or research conducted in order to aid and abet a problem that has already been created are both equally important in solving problems in medicine, social ideas/constructs, as well as in environmentalism.

This panel is essentially centered around the idea of documentary as a form of research and how to establish the medium of documentary as a legitimate/widely accepted form of research. One of the panelists defined research to be “the process of asking questions within institutionally defined parameters, within historically conditioned settings, through established methods of inquiry, inside systems of order, etc.) In other words, what documentary lacks, in the views of the audiences and other researchers, is the order of other types of research (an example would be the scientific method.) The panelist also explained how research is “Janus” faced, appropriately named after the Roman god of beginnings and transitions who is depicted as having two faces as he looks to the past as well as the future. This means that that research is inherently two sided composed of one side that is dictated by legibility, convention and assessment and the other side which is dictated by innovation, the concept of new knowledge, and the not yet known. In research, there is both order and room to create, yet there is often presented a distinction between thinking and making. The intersection between research and the arts is so rarely explored because the problematic views that there is an innate difference between scholarship and craft. The form of documentary as research is a complicated phenomenon because people aren’t willing to accept the validity of the form and the knowledge required in order to make a documentary.

One of the panelists described a problem that the French philosopher Derrida once came across in one of his classes that can perfectly show this bias. A student of his wished to give in a visual production piece in response to an assignment instead of a traditional essay. He expressed that his “inclination was to accept this innovation” but that he didn’t because he “has the impression in reading or in watching their production that what I expected from a discourse…had suffered.” His argument was that words are not images and imaged are not words but even though imagistic research is a form of innovation, it fails because it’s not in the standards of discourse. Essentially, though Derrida welcomes the innovation, the “precision and rigor” which give scholarship its credibility are not present in a project like this.

To this point, I must respectfully disagree with Derrida and any researcher who say that they welcome innovation but their actions contradict this statement, as they decline innovation. A simple fact of life is that everything (humans, mindsets, the world, idea, etc.) must evolve as time progresses in order to become situated in the new times and, quite frankly, survive. One cannot expect to go their entire life without changing. Change is always a necessary factor in the betterment of things. We are always told to “think outside the box” and are always looking for innovation/vision and urged to think in an innovative fashion. However, if we reject the innovation that is proposed, how does one expect us to move towards improvement? The concept of research and scholarship is so grounded in order and rigor, that it is viewed as being boring, traditional, and uncreative. It doesn’t necessarily have to be viewed this way. Research is engaging, interesting, and important and if it wasn’t so grounded and accepted innovation such as documentaries as research, it would be seen more in this way.

Research should be about questions. Questions about the things we don’t know, questions about things we want to know more about, questions about things that exist and questions about things that might exist. It should be about trying to find answers to these various questions. It should be accepting of different methods used to find the answers and more open to innovation, especially in a world that demands innovation to solve the problems we are faced with and cannot reconcile with the information/technology we already have. And maybe this will be interest more people and inspire more people to conduct research.

Extra Credit #1

Panel: Tsunami Hits Cannibal Tours: Documentary in the 21^st Century
Speaker: Brian Winston

Date: 11/17/14

Attending the opening reception and panel for the Codes and Modes conference as well as listening to the keynote speaker, Brian Winston, was an extremely enriching experience. I’ve never really been interested in documentaries, either as a watcher or as a maker, but recently I’ve been trying to broaden my knowledge of filmmaking in general. Thus, this talk and the whole conference in general truly attributed to my education on the medium of documentary in general as well as the particular problems facing documentary in the 21^st century. Winston first defined documentary as a space for ideas and for people to discuss issues in the modern world. However, he also expressed that these issues are sometimes dealt in improper ways, engendering problems in the documentary genre.

            

The first problem that Winston brought up was that documentary film often reveals the “ridiculous racism” involved in the conception of the film itself. The eyes of the camera often dehumanize and objectify the subjects, who are often minorities and foreign populations that are unfamiliar to the audience that typically view these pieces. This is the problem that I took interest in most. He discussed this issue in terms of the Oscar nominated documentary feature The Act of Killing (2012). This documentary confronts former Indonesian death-squad leaders and requests for them to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish (including typical Hollywood crime scenarios and musical numbers.) Winston described The Act of Killing an ethical swamp of issues and as he says “we feel good about our empathy and knowing we can know spell Indonesia.” In essence, documentary filmmakers are beginning to argue that it is due to the “jaded audience” that they are adopting procedures that some of us read to be reprehensive. Thus, creating a trap for these filmmakers, as either the audience will feel bored or they will complain about the way controversial issues are handled. Thus, Winston goes on to say that the integrity of image is questioned and the digital medium turns the “half full glass into a half empty glass,” as we can no longer have a form that makes some comment on the real when we can no longer even trust anything on the screen.

Winston brought up a variety of interesting points during this talk/panel. I can relate these points to classes that I’ve taken and how there are so many filmmakers making films for an audience. This isn’t right and it isn’t fair to blame the audience if they recoil at your reprehensive attempts to appease them.  Filmmakers must take into account that audiences contain intelligent individuals who will question, who will criticize, who will watch analytically and observantly and who will not hold themselves back when they feel they have comments to make. Filmmakers should make films for themselves, so that these films are authentic to themselves, and then there will be no “trap” for them to fall into.

Blog #3 - MOMI Trip

Unable to go with the class, I visited the Museum of the Moving Image last Friday and found it to be a very interesting experience. It was fascinating to see all these mechanisms that we’ve discussed in class and the enormous, older apparatuses that were used in filmmaking’s past. It’s hard to imagine, in a world that now places so much value on smaller sized technology that such colossal machines were lugged around on the set of films. The changes in moving image technology have certainly made the filmmaking experience more efficient. The ability to construct machines that are higher quality but also lesser in size make the filmmaking process easier as well and better for audiences to visually experience. The material we produce these days are clearly better in quality but can also take us to worlds that we do not necessarily know (space, war, etc.) but also worlds we do know (family life, friends, coming of age, etc.) in a more heightened and realistic way.

One of my favorite exhibits had to be the “Behind the Screen: The Actors” gallery. I loved seeing portraits of all the older actresses and actors that were the faces of my childhood, as I watched all these movies with my parents. Similarly, the Chuck Jones exhibit was really well done as well. I loved reading all the excerpts and animation sequences featuring cartoons such as Looney Toons and Dr. Seuss characters like the Grinch. I’ve always been captivated by animation, the art associated with animation, and companies that specialize in animated features such as Disney/Pixar. The exhibit was highly informative and visually appealing with all the bright colors used and the arrangement of all the sequences.

This leads to the first of my favorite demos. The stop-motion animation demo was simply very enjoyable and a very nice way of interacting with visitors in the museum. Playing around with the various “scenes” such as waves or the rainbow or the city skyline to make a small animation by slowly moving each image with each photograph taken, consumed a good portion of my time at the museum. It was very amusing. The second demonstration that I was particularly fascinated by was the music demo. As I mentioned in my artists statement, I’ve always loved playing around with the tension of sound and image and the disparity created when the tone of sound/image does not necessarily match the tone of its counterpart. Therefore, given a scene and allowed to play different scores with it and then analyzing the difference that it made in the overall tone was extremely intriguing. I chose a scene from Punch-Drunk Love, a film that my Practical Film Analysis class analyzed over the summer. An important part of the film itself was the anxiety-ridden characteristic of the score and how that affected our understanding of the characters and plot. This demonstration further proved how important the score truly was in that movie. 

(one of my stop motion pieces) 

ASSIGNMENT 2 - AUDIO INTERVIEW

ASSIGNMENT 2: AUDIO INTERVIEW from Soumya Misra on Vimeo.

Blog #2 - Listening Exercise

Last week I embarked on a journey known commonly as a “sound walk.” I decided to record the sounds that came with my commute home, which involved several forms of transportation and the crossing of boroughs. It is early in the morning on a rainy Saturday.

I truly believe that the only thing that can tackle the chaos of New York City is a rainstorm. The rain brings some of it’s own chaos with it to the city, counteracting the screeching horns of taxicabs and rushed shuffling of pedestrians. The sound of my own feet stumbling upon uneven sidewalks and crunching on leaves is drowned out by the giggles of children as they sink their galoshes into deep puddles that ricochet, spraying water on all nearby surfaces. The cars seem to imitate the children, their tires treading through equally daunting puddles, the echoes of splashes ringing in my ears until the next car follows.

The hoards of reporters following the Ebola crisis are huddled, outside of Bellevue hospital, under umbrellas that thrash in the wind. They are furiously broadcasting into their microphones, releasing scratchy noises as the electronics and the rain intermingle. As I pass them, the rain comes down harder. It hits the ground in heavy smacks. Ripples of rainwater trickle down sewage drains.

Riding on the bus brings its own unique noises to my journey. The engine of the bus continues a low hum throughout the ride, providing background noise to the conversations of elderly men and women. They talk about Broadway plays and even sing some bars of show tunes. I can also hear the static noise of music blasting from headphones coming from behind me. In front of me I hear the sound of water bottle being sucked dry, cracking under the pressure and popping once released. These are sounds I am not used to hearing on the bus, as mundane as they are. Usually on the bus, I plug in my headphones and drown out the noise from the surroundings with music.

I can hear him before I see him. “Nani! Nani! Look how much candy I got from trick or treating!” It’s a high-pitched voice, verging on shrill, but also the sound I was most excited to hear. The thuds of his steps on the staircase seem like they belong in Jurassic Park or some other dinosaur movie. From the staircase comes my younger brother, enthusiastic and giggling, ending my journey home and my sound walk.