The one that I thought was the best documentary was Super Size Me. All three documentaries are about different subjects. Bowling for Columbine is about guns in America. Fahrenheit 9/11 is about the terrible events of what happened on September the 11th 2001 in America. Super Size Me is about the fast food industry.
The first one I watched was Bowling for Columbine which was directed by Michael Moore. In the documentary he goes around America asking questions about the gun policy. He also tackles the violence that goes on in America. One of the things that really struck me was that if you open up a bank account in certain parts of America you get a free gun. Another thing that had an impact on me was the Charlton Heston interview. That is where Michael Moore goes to Charlton Heston's house and interviews him about gun violence. Half of the questions he asks are ignored by the actor who just sits there and shrugs his shoulders. Later on in the interview, Michael Moore gets out a picture of a little girl who was killed in the hometown of where he is from. After seeing this, Charlton Heston walks out of the interview and Michael Moore leaves the picture by a tree. I think the clip shows Charlton Heston being pig-headed and showing that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself and will defend American gun policy until the day he dies. After Michael Moore showed the picture of the young girl who had been killed many thought that Michael Moore was invading the actor's private life but when you watch a Michael Moore documentary he does and says what he feels and as a viewer it hooks and grips you and makes you want to watch. Now a lot of people think that Michael Moore takes things too far now. However, as a viewer I like people who can be very controversial it always makes things far more interesting. Documentaries that play it safe are really rather boring. The three documentaries that I picked don’t play it safe at all. They push the boundaries with what you can do as a filmmaker and at the time Bowling for Columbine was new and in a way the first of its kind to do something new and brave. However, with all the documentaries Michael Moore makes he has become a comedy target in some hit shows like South Park and the film Team America World Police. The film saw him with his belly hanging out eating a hotdog with him screaming I am Michael Moore I am Michael Moore. When he watched the film he didn’t find it funny and said there was no need for it. On the other hand, you could also argue that there was no need for him to show the picture of the young girl who had been killed in his hometown so there are two sides to the story.
I think the best place you could go and film a documentary would be in America because the place has so much history to it; 9/11, first black president, the assassination of JFK, the Richard Nixon case, the first landing on the moon, etc. As you can tell America has a questionable past. The second documentary I will be talking about is Super Size me, which was written and directed by Morgan Spurlock. The film is about the fast food industry. He ate nothing but McDonalds food for a month. The routine he followed was;
- He must fully eat three McDonald's meals per day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- He must consume every item on the McDonald's menu at least once over the course of the 30 days (he managed this in nine days).
- He must only ingest items that are offered on the McDonald's menu, including bottled water. All outside consumption of food is prohibited
- He must Super Size the meal when offered, but only when offered (i.e., he is not able to Super Size items himself).
- He will attempt to walk about as much as a typical U.S citizen, based on a suggested figure of 5,000 standardized distance steps per day,[8] but he did not closely adhere to this, as he walked more while in New York than Houston.
By the end of the first day after eating only McDonalds, he started to feel sick. Then the next day, while eating a McDonalds breakfast he threw up everywhere. As the documentary goes on, his health starts to get worse and worse and he starts to pile on the pounds. At the start of the documentary you find out that he is a vegetarian and that he would sit down with his family and eat meals with them.
Morgan Spurlock said he had come up with the idea of the documentary after watching TV. He saw two teenage girls take up a lawsuit against McDonalds because they thought that it had made them fat. This proves how stupid America can be. How can you blame the fast food place for making you fat? The customer is going into the fast food place and making themselves fat, they have no one to blame but themselves. After the film was completed Morgan Spurlock went back on to his normal diet. He went back to his average weight size which is 185 pounds, 84kg. His then girlfriend took charge of his diet and his health recovery. He made documents on his journey and his progress of losing his weight. After completing the notes she created a book called The Great American Detox Diet. After the film was complete Morgan Spurlock went back to having his family meals. After watching the film it did not put me off eating fast food. I'm a fast food lover and seeing the side effects it did to his body didn’t bother me at all. The film was nominated for an Oscar but didn’t win, however the film was loved by audiences and film reviewers. It was hated by people who work in the fast food industry. At one point people from the fast food industry tried to get the film banned from being made public. I think Morgan Spurlock had a lot of courage to do a film like this. I think he was very lucky that the film was not banned. After the film’s release, McDonalds got rid of the Super Size portions that they used to do. Now they do small, medium or large. I think the choice you get with large is small but I also think that McDonalds are trying to play it safe.
The third and final documentary I will be talking about is Fahrenheit 9/11. The film as you can tell is about the awful events that happened in America in 2001. The film was directed by Michael Moore and as we all know, he likes to be controversial.
The first thing that strikes me about the film is the film's poster where you see Michael Moore and George Bush holding hands. That poster proved to be very controversial with the public but it was effective and people went to watch it. The film was a box office success. In the film Michael Moore tackles the American government and questions whether the US government had a part to play in the 9/11 attacks. When you watch the film most of the people he interviews give just short one word answers, pretending that they don’t know anything. However we all know they do, they just want to play it safe and not give out any information that could hurt the US government or hurt loved ones that are close to them. Michael Moore also shows a lot of news footage of George Bush of interviews on the subject but George Bush being the genius that he is, tries to move the question away from 9/11 on to something else. Now in my mind I think if he was never elected president, then 9/11 would have never happened. I think that he had a big part to play in the attacks but we will never know unless we as an international community push for an answer on what really happened that day. Michael Moore tries to in the documentary but does not get very far because people are reluctant to talk to him. I think that is because Michael Moore is very good at exposing people’s true colours. Michael Moore thinks that the attacks only happened to start a war for money and oil. After 9/11 lots of deaths have been caused because America can’t finish what they started. When the film came out, it proved to be controversial with a lot of people who worked close with George Bush saying that a lot of stuff in the film was not true. Of course they are going to say that, they worked for the man and they don’t want any of his secrets exposed. I think George Bush was a dangerous president for America. When he left as president, he left the country in a mess. Michael Moore shows in his film that he thinks if Bush gets another term the country would be run down and in trouble and of course it did because of the recession. This was my favourite documentary to look at because the whole conspiracy about 9/11 keeps me hooked. There will always be that argument whether the government were behind it but we will never know. When you watch the film you feel sorry for the victims who died on that terrible day. When the film was released the reviews were positive; many saying that Moore had made a really good documentary on a controversial subject, but many who were close to George Bush had a lot of negative comments about the film, saying the stuff being said was untrue.
Accuracy
I think the information shown in the film is pretty much on point and on focus. I think this because if I watched a documentary on something I knew a lot about or loved and they got a fact wrong. I would change the channel or turn the documentary off immediately because I would have found the information shown on the TV to be misleading and I would have also thought that the director put very little effort into the documentary. Also if you were making a documentary like Super Size Me, and you made something up for effect you could get sued and end up in court etc. Therefore when you are making a documentary always make sure that your information is on point and true to the film that you are making.
Balance
In a documentary it is always important to have balance and to present both sides of the argument. Michael Moore is very good at offering both sides of an argument because when thinks he is right in goes in on the attack and when the other person is right I always notice the camera is fixed and looking at him. One example of this is when you watch something like Borat and you are only getting one side of the argument while he is laughing and they are getting more and more angry with him. At times it can be very funny to watch and I get enjoyment out of watching things like that unfold in a documentary.
I think when you are making a documentary that it is important that you stay true to what you are making and not get side tracked with stuff that is of no importance to the documentary and not use cutaways that make no sense at all. I think it can mislead the audience. I am a big hip hop fan and I know a lot about Hip Hop and have followed it for years and I would be really annoyed if I watched something that I knew about and they were lying or included some poor information on the subject. As a fan you would feel that they are letting the side down and have no interest in the subject they are talking about. I always think movie critics give Hip Hop documentary films a bad name because they are well off white people who don't like to see people of a different colour or poor background make something of themselves, that is just my opinion.
For my documentary I plan to stay true to what I am talking about I plan not to go off track as my documentary is about Healthy Eating and the effects junk food has on your body. I myself plan to eat healthily and see the effects that it has on my body. Knowing me it will kill me. I hope the outcome is very funny and fun for people to watch. When I start filming I want to get people who know a lot about healthy food like nutritionists.
What I have noticed with documentaries is that if it is on a controversial subject or a controversial person the documentary gets seen by more people. That is because people want to see what the fuss is about. However, if you were to play it safe your documentary probably wouldn't do as well. Documentaries like Super Size me, Blowing For Columbine, and anything about 9/11 will get seen by more people because of their controversial nature.
Privacy
Privacy in a documentary is where certain people do not want to give out certain information about themselves. Therefore if the filmmaker asks the interviewer a certain question to ask the person they are interviewing,, if she or he does not wish to answer it is a sign that they want to maintain their privacy and respect in some areas. Another form of privacy is when you watch crime shows about someone was has been attacked or raped etc. and they don't want to be seen on TV. They have the sequence so that it is half black and so that you can not see the person and also out of respect they dub the voice and change it to an actor's voice for safety reasons.
Representation
With Representation in a documentary there are all types of stereotypes and opinions on subjects that people like. So if I was to watch a documentary on English politics I would be sitting thinking that they are a bunch of posh boys who had everything from the start of their life. As most people have to work really hard to get the things they want from life. There are of course two sides to this argument. For example if an upper class family were to watch a documentary about Hip Hop they would be sitting thinking what a bunch of low life's and that they are thinking they are all tough with them carrying guns and smoking weed etc. However, with me being a big rap fan myself, it is just their lifestyle and I am not a chav but that is the stereotype that comes with the music itself because of the actions rappers take and how they act.
Objectivity
Objectivity is judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.
Therefore, objectivity in a documentary means that you are uninfluenced by other peoples actions and emotions and you keep your own opinion on the subject matter and don't really listen to anybody else's opinion.
Subjectivity
Subjectivity is judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts.
Therefore in a documentary subjectivity means that if I was to meet a certain famous person that feedback I would get back from them would either change my opinion on that person. For example when I watched Bowling for Columbine at the end of the movie I didn't like Charlton Heston anymore because he supported gun violence. Therefore my opinion changed of him but then you will get some people who will agree with his policy. So we are being subjective and not objective depending on our own personal views.
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