Author: a.marzullo

amarzullo.weebly.com

I watched the documentary “The Hornet’s Nest” on Amazon Prime and it was one of the most intense and profound documentaries I’ve ever seen. The film is shot from the perspective of ABC War Reporter Mike Boettcher and his son, Carlos, and is essentially what it would look like if Call of Duty was real.

The audience connects with Mike and Carlos, who are trying to repair a hole in their relationship like every father and son do: traveling with soldiers in combat zones in Afghanistan. Eventually, Carlos returns home and Mike is left alone with the group of soldiers, with whom he embarks on a dangerous mission.

However, the mission goes awry when the group, which received bad intel and reports, lands in the wrong place, and is surrounded by Taliban soldiers. A three-day mission becomes a nine-day mission, and multiple American troops are killed during the raid.

The audience grew with many of the soldiers and learned their personalities, only to find out they died days later. It is an unscripted and and unfiltered look at the horrors of war, and how young men and women cope with the incredible amounts of danger they expose themselves to. The film had a profound effect on me, and I sympathized with every soldier that straps up a pair of boots and puts on a helmet and travels in the most dangerous parts of the world. It put their sacrifices into perspective for me, and made me realize how lucky we are to live the lives we do. I recommend everyone watch “The Hornet’s Nest,” as it will open your eyes as to how high the price of freedom really is.

I’d like to do my short doc on a week in production with The Ticker. I pitched this idea for the video poem, but was told that it would work better for the short doc. When a lot of people think of a college newspaper, they think of just a club of kids who want to write for fun. The Ticker is so much more, and I’d like to document that. I want to get interviews with people, videos of them working when it’s hectic, and even show how much work goes in at 2am on a Friday (technically Saturday morning). It’s more than a club, and it’s members love it like a second home and second job, which is why I would like to document how important it is to them to do their job in “educating the Baruch student body.”

I have two ideas for my visual poem, both of which I’d be interesting in shooting.

1. My first one would be about a local band in NY preparing for a show. I’d shoot the guitarists strumming, the pre-show conversations, the crowd, the set-up, etc. I think it would give a cool inside look into what a band puts into a show in the moments before it begins. I would set it to dramatic music, most likely, and would shoot it in a club where a band I know is performing.
2. I could also shoot “a day in the life at The Ticker.” Most people don’t realize how much work is put into producing The Ticker each and every week, and I’d like to show how much is done, particularly during the Thursday night production nights. I could also set that to music building up.

 

I found My Deadly Beautiful City as a very powerful example of video storytelling. The camera shots and pans across the vast Norwegian landscape show just how beautiful the town is, and give you a sense of the scale, despite how polluted and dangerous the town is. It is a really good contrast to what the story really is.