General Analysis of Morgan Spurlock Documentaries

To this date, Morgan Spurlock has created three documentaries: Supersize Me, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. These documentaries fall under the Direct Cinema Documentary category, all of them including Spurlock actively taking part in the narrative and conducting interviews to get the story across that he wants to convey. This is done in a manner that comes across as more cinematic than most documentaries, including an array of graphics and cartoon snippets created for the purpose of the documentaries, these acting as a way to illustrate a point being made without the need to film someone speaking for a long period of time. For this reason, the documentaries usually end up being quite successful as they become more accessible; if there were extended scenes of people talking without interruption, it is likely that the audience may lose interest unless they watched with an already existing interest in the subject manner. These documentaries were, for me, an introduction into mainstream documentaries and how they are able to be extended from the shorter programmes one might see on the television to larger productions that can inform a wider audience. This does, however, appear to only reach wider audiences when different mediums are put in, not only including the usual interviews but additional scenes such as the aforementioned cartoons and graphics, as well as the scenes such as in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold where advertisements are used, this being one of the more interesting additions used in a documentary as not only does it humour its audience, but it also serves a purpose within the film. However, the use of these additions means that the documentaries become slightly less believable as their purpose is focused quite heavily on entertainment as well as actual knowledge, meaning that information can be sacrificed so as to make time for more entertaining factors. Despite this, I feel that these documentaries are more often than not successful in their goal, providing a clear enough message to intrigue and inform audiences.

Lessons Learnt

Lessons learnt whilst completing this documentary 1) How to look at a project through various perspectives, not only in terms of creativity and how things should appear, but also what needs to be done by different people within a group. What may be interesting and/or easy to do with a camera may not be viable when it comes to creating sound to fit 2) The use of filters and other available effects on the camera. While outside filming, the issue of zebra levels came up quite a lot. This was solved eventually when experimenting with filters. From this I have learnt when it is appropriate to use these filters, as previously I have used them in our first semester to less successful effect. 3) As well as technical skills, more personal skills have been learnt about how to deal with certain issues when shooting on location. In this case, while filming at a memorial we were approached by a member of the public who intervened with our work. I feel that we, as a group, worked well in not aggravating said person, and it has acted as a lesson on how to deal with the situation

Filming in Liverpool

Our documentary, Walk On, is based around the Hillsborough disaster and the story of one man whose brother died in the incident. Originally, Walk On was intended to be a more poetic piece showing scenery from around Hillsborough and the memorials dedicated to the incident, though this slowly developed into the project that we have created. While our original intention was to avoid interviews, we decided to make contact with various people who were related to Hillsborough such as support groups and people who had spoken about the event. Each member of the group attempted to make contact with someone, though most of us were unable to make contact for various reasons. In the end, the only contact that we were able to make was Steve Kelley, who works for the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and whose brother had died in the incident. From this we decided to base the documentary around his story so as to create a different sort of documentary from what people would be used to seeing; a personal story would be more effective than a documentary about the general topic of the Hillsborough disaster. The filming session in Liverpool went, in my opinion, fairly well. We were able to arrive at our scheduled interview in a timely fashion, giving us enough chance to set up equipment and the like upon arrival. After trying to set up lighting equipment, we discovered that the environment we were in was unsuitable for such equipment as there were a lot of reflective surfaces, leaving glare in certain areas that was impossible to avoid due to the small space. However, I feel that this means we learnt something from the experience, and we were quick in resolving the issue as best we could. However, I personally made a mistake while operating the camera, framing the interview so that a piece of the lighting equipment could be seen. This is something that I feel I have learnt from, which will help in future projects. While filming on location at a Hillsborough memorial in Anfield we were approached by a member of the public who interrupted our filming. I feel that this gave us a clearer idea about what it is like to film on location, as it is a problem that we have not encountered on other projects set during the year. While it meant that we were unable to get all the footage that we wanted, it does mean that we know how to react to the situation if ever we were to film on location in such a manner again.