Doc Mode Write-up 2

Henry Whiteley

Doc Mode Activity 2

TMA 293

This film is a segment of a series of lock off shots in tourist and travel locations in Europe.  The film focuses on highly populated locations.  Some people are moving through, some are trying their best to enjoy the location before departing, others are finding a moment of solace in a quiet space just a bit outside the chaos.  These small slices of life create a tapestry of travel life in Europe.  

Alec Soth’s Summer Nights at the Dollar Tree was a touchstone for this project.  Soth travels through the midwest setting up lock off shots of small moments. A living room window’s lights turning off; someone taking a smoke break in a parking lot outside a fast food joint; teenagers swinging a golf club while their car fills up with gas.  Soth frames these moments and sits with them.  He waits for a little bit of movement to tell a larger story. These slice-of-life moments give you a feeling of a place–even if it is someone's interpretation or memory of a place.  

Poetic documentaries don’t always follow a particular timeline or sit in a particular space.  Leviathan is not a documentation of commercial fishing.  The film is a poetic, seas-sick inducing, immersive, and brutally long documentary trying to splash the feeling of being a commercial fisherman right onto the audience.  It uses disorienting point-of-view and shaky camera shots to help immerse the audience. Its repetitiveness tires the audience as it does the workers.  It is as hypnotic as it is disturbing. 

Filming this project while globetrotting through Europe, I would intentionally slow down my busy itinerary, observe the people around me, and film.  I have often heard from experienced travellers that they seek to see high demand destinations at low traffic times.  People go to great lengths to avoid each other.  Thus, it became an interesting social experiment to observe people attempting to enjoy themselves despite the crowd around them. Some would be on their phone, others would simply look on.  Watching others handle the crowd created small little stories about each person at odds with the monumental world around them.  Some of the shots are of people escaping the crowd–whether it is them sitting around the corner from the action or finding a quiet time at the park.  I attempted to isolate them but keep a small part of the frame busy to remind the audience that they are not alone, despite their best efforts.  

I hope to continue this project.  I think there are interesting themes that can be explored further.  A still frame in a busy place creates visual intrigue.  Making subjects being strangers (of varying degrees) in the space they are in is a difficult task.  It is often revealed through a lengthy and quiet frame, exploring awkward demeanor of those within the space trying to enjoy the world.  I think with more vignettes, this theme could become clearer to the audience.  We all seek to enjoy the world and sometimes forget that people are part of that enjoyment.  We can find as much joy people-watching as we do sightseeing.