Researching for my documentary!

 For a couple weeks, we watched documentaries in class to get an idea of what a documentary initials for our own documentary’s that we created after our viewings. 

The first one we watched was amazing. To be completely honest, I don’t remember the name of it. Although, it was about these two boys who were African American, put into a prestigious predominately white school in Manhattan. It followed them until high school graduation which was so cool because we got to watch them grow up.

Although, I obviously couldn’t replicate a documentary like this because it took over 10 years to make, there was some stuff that stood out that I wanted to include in my documentary. What appealed to me the most was the fact that there was not many “sit down” interviews included. I liked how they sort of followed their subject with a camera, and I wanted to incorporate that in my documentary. This style makes a documentary more entertaining, as you’re seeing what they’re talking about, and it simply just feels more intimate. 

The second documentary our teacher showed us is titled "Exit through the gift shop”. This documentary served as a major source of inspiration when it came to coming up with ideas for what we would be passionate enough to film our documentary on. Street artist "Banksy" created this documentary to highlight the realm of street art. This film was  Thierry Guetta, a French artist. He appeared many times in the film, so he was the videographer, along with a subject. 

This documentary answers the question of why someone is a street artist, and also shows the deeper meaning of it. It also maintains humor and entertainment with this. It also poses the viewer with a very difficult question of what exactly qualifies as art. 

What I wanted to replicate in my own documentary was how it was shot. I like the dark setting they used. It was dark, but not in a depressing way. I wanted to set up my interview shot that way.

We chose to create a documentary about the realm of street art, particularly graffiti, after being inspired by this one. A friend of ours who has been doing graffiti for years was the person we had in mind from our school.