Doc Mode Activity 1: Observational Mode

Documentarian’s Statement:

Even before any consideration of this footage as an Observational piece, I asked the subject, Michael Anderson, an art teacher at Diamond Fork Jr. High School, if I could film him in the process of doing something he does best: art, which in this case was a charcoal drawing.  As part of the Process Exercise, I asked him if I could film him drawing something that would take about five minutes to complete; he didn’t need to explain what he was doing nor acknowledge my presence as I was filming.  In this regard, I hoped to achieve a feeling of “lived experience spontaneously,” as Michael created something “in front of the camera without overt intervention” from me (Nichols 172).    

            I believe this clip captures the feel of the Observational mode, which is not to say that what you see is the whole story.  For one, Michael would not have done this charcoal drawing had I not asked him to.  I did not just walk into his classroom and capture something he was already doing.  On a very small level, this was an “event staged to become part of the historical record” (177).  Granted, I set out to film someone performing a process, not to film a so-called event. 

            This clip engages the Observational mode most strongly in its “sense of the duration of actual events” (176).  Nichols explains that Observational documentaries “break with the dramatic pace of mainstream fiction films and the sometimes hurried, montage assembly of images that support expository or poetic documentaries” (176).  Though they appear to represent time accurately, Observational documentaries often take liberties with editing that consequently make a longer process appear much shorter.  Wiseman, for example, presented his observation of the making of a 30-second commercial as taking 25 minutes, when it actually took hours and hours (176).  Despite inevitable editing, Observational documentarians “try to preserve some of the qualities of the rushes in their films” to maintain the vitality absent in Hollywood films and documentaries that utilize other modes.  Though I edited a lot of the camera movement out for obvious reasons, I purposely left the movement at 1:13 in to achieve the unedited feel.

            As I edited this film from its original length—approximately 6:30 to less than 2:00—I still wanted the viewer to believe the process was unfolding in real time.  Anyone watching the clip closely will notice the progress we do not get to see, as each successive shot reveals something drawn that was not there before, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  To a certain extent, audiences expect to see just the important parts of processes; otherwise, they would need to sit through hours and hours of footage (imagine a fishing or cooking show unedited).
           Better editors make sequences like this appear much more seamless, as evidenced in this clip from the Maysles’ Salesman.  Like my clip, this one lasts approximately two minutes (begin around 9:00 and continue until 11:30).  The way this scene is edited gives the impression of a beginning, middle, and end, but common sense tells us not even the best of salesmen could pull this off in that amount of time.  Successful Observational documentaries portray their processes and events as lived experiences through deft editing.