Month: April 2019

Password: FINALCUT

I still need to get more footage of the dynamic of the pizzeria since not many people showed up the day I filmed.

 

 

We are still in the middle of shooting, interviewing and getting everything together for our documentary about The Ticker! We need more footage from the weekly meetings but most of the team isn’t on production today because of Spring Break. We will be conducting more interviews/ filming post Spring Break. Once we have more efficient interviews we will add that to the rough cut. We have some great B-Roll but need more expansive shots of talking and the members of the Ticker.

Thank you!

-Andrew & Darielle

 

 

 

The Fyre Music Festival was such a moving documentary in my opinion. First, I think it was filmed really well. There’s some great shots and angles. The story itself takes a good look at the digital world we live in and reminds us that we should be cautious of social media and advertisements.

Wild Wild Country is a documentary a group of people moving to Oregon from India, bringing along their religious beliefs. Some might say it was a cult because of how this religion/ or religious movement functioned. The documentary covers how Osho and his secretary Sheela moved their religious group, “Rajneshees” to Oregon. They found a completely empty area. Empty as in just Land, nothing on it but grass. These people which was apart of the religious group, both males and females, built a place to call their own. People of wealth that was apart of the group donated money also to help build the town. They called their town Rajneeshpuram. They came in peace, didn’t bother anyone, didn’t cause harm to anyone at all. The town that was close by started not liking the people of Rajneeshpuram, they started calling their religious group a cult.

After a video was exposed of people being naked during some type of religious event. People started to believe that it was really a cult, and to add to that, they think that this one man should not have this much power over a group of people. The people of the other village started attacking them, physically. They even tried to run them out of the place they built. Take in consideration, the people of the other village were a small about. Not even 200 hundred people living there. It all came down to a vote to decide who stays. The. Rajneeshees who easily won because their religious group out numbered the amount of people that lived in the other village. The results of this was that the Rajneeshees ended up running them out of their own village by buying them out, house by house. When the owner said “No”, they kept raising the price they were willing to pay, and eventually they bought out their village.

As the group got bigger, Osho added new officials from LA to work with Sheela. Well not “with”, but they had other responsibilities. Sheela started realizing that these new people had a bad influence on him. Sheela had his room wired where they would meet and have discussions. She knew what was going and and what they were convincing Osho/ The Bhagwan to do. The got him gifts all the time, which the Bhagwan likes. It seems like the Bhagwan lost tracked of what was important and Sheela realized that. Sheela is part of the reason the group was what it was, she was the one that called the shots, who defender the people, and then here comes these new people ruining it.

This documentary was made to show people what really went down, and how it affected people like Sheela who went to jail, but released. The documentary in general has a lot of great shots, especially B Roll of the actually people that was involved during that time itself. Also great interviews of people who was present and directly affected by what happened.

‘On Her Shoulders’ is a documentary about 23 yo Nadia Murad and her journey to spreading awareness about the 2014 genocide of Yazidis in Northern Iraq. She was a prisoner of ISIS who escaped and was one of their many young sex slaves. She travels around the world doing interviews and going on talk shows to talk about her experiences to spread awareness and to try and make a difference for her community. This documentary follows her throughout the process up to the day she gives her testimony at the general assembly of the UN.

This piece is so powerful and so relevant to the field of journalism because it not only follows a young woman who was never meant to be an activist or public figure but it exposes a negative side of media and journalism that needs to be addressed. She was a simple girl from the village who had her life taken from her and made the decision to dedicate her life to try and make a difference for her community. But why I say it is so relevant to the field of journalism is because this doc exposes how sometimes journalists and media focuses attention on irrelevant aspects of a situation and hone in on one specific thing that may be the easier option to draw the attention on the public rather than on what is the real point. And  it also sheds light on how as journalists, we need to truly try and understand stories that are being told and the people which are sharing these stories. Yes, it is important to get the story, yet we have a duty to protect those who are sharing and be sensitive to their situation and tread lightly.  I don’t want to go into detail and elaborate further because then I will give it away. This is a documentary that anyone going into the field needs to watch and really needs to take into consideration for their future journalistic endeavors.

 

I watched Behind the Curve, which is a documentary that focuses on a group of people that believe the conspiracy that the Earth is flat. The documentary follows one main character in the movement, Mark, all the way through to the end when he helped host theory’s first ever international conference on the topic. Throughout the narrative a lot of different theorists are heard from, as well as people who represent the majority of people who completely reject the idea. The documentary was very interesting because it opened my eyes to such a large group of people that I didn’t even know existed and they did this through offering a lot of different perspectives. There were various interviews throughout the documentary, even from experts.

Visually it had really appealing images. The shots throughout the documentary were very aesthetically please and made you want to watch. They really utilized color as a lot of the scenes had pops of color throughout it. They also got creative with the visual representation of some things. When Mark was reflecting on past experiences they didn’t do cheesy reenactments, but rather, they had illustrations to demonstrate was he was talking about. They utilized a lot of media such as youtube videos and Skype call sessions as well.

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.

https://www.netflix.com/title/70181716?s=i&trkid=13747225

This documentary, released in 2011, is about Jiro Ono, an 85 year old sushi chef who is widely considered the world’s greatest sushi chefs. His restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro, has just 10 seats and serves exclusively sushi. The restaurant is located in a Tokyo subway station, an inconspicuous spot for a restaurant that requires reservations to be made at least a month in advance. The prices start at 30,000 yen, about $ 2,700, for a 20 piece course. The restaurant has a three star Michelin Guide rating with people coming from all over the world for the experience that lasts about fifteen minutes.

The documentary was released by Magnolia Pictures and was directed by David Gelb. The soundtrack has a lot of classical music that sounds repetitive, which was a deliberate choice by Gelb to a metaphor for Jiro’s work ethic. There was 150 hours of footage and the editing took ten months. The film was well received and got 99% on rotten tomatoes.

I liked the progression of the film. It starts out introducing Jiro and his restaurant, praises from food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto, and his former employee Hachiro Mizutani, then gradually becomes more focused on Jiro’s process of perfecting his craft and his life and relationship with his sons Yoshikazu and Takashi. I really liked the filming of the sushi, I felt that the frequent shots of the completed pieces of sushi were almost a metaphor for Jiro’s life and work. The sushi appears simple, however a lot of work and preparation goes into each piece. With chefs massaging octopus for up to 50 minutes, marinating fish for five or more hours, and aging fish for three to ten days, Jiro is uncompromising.

 

Watching the documentary of “The murder or Ella Lee Bennet” was a real good documentary. I got to understand who the mother  Charity was and the son Paris who killed his younger sister Ella at age 4 years old. When i was listening to the tapes when they played back the night he viciously attacked his sister i believed what he said until the mother said he lied. He basically said he seen his sister as a demon and he was hallucinating when it happened. Later towards the end of the documentary he expressed to the interviewer that he was not hallucinating that he did what he did and tried to fabricate the story for himself. The documentary spoke a little about the mother of Charity who was arrested for killing Charity father when Charity was 5 years old. She was acquitted for the murder but Charity her daughter still believed that her mother murdered her dad. She also felt both her mother and son had issues. Paris seems like a nice young boy in the videos was shown when he was less then 10 years old. He seemed as if he got along with his sister and loved her very much. Charity the mother said that her son got along with his sister but at first he was  jealous when his baby sister was born. Paris was 13 years old  when  murdered his sister.  That day Charity went to work and the babysitter was in the house. He manipulated the babysitter and told her that she can go home and that he would watch his little sister. That was the night he attacked her by stabbing her 17 times, some on the torso, head, neck, back, punched her to. From the police reports he did a lot of damage to his sister. When he called 911 and said he killed his sister because he though she was a demon the operator told him to do CPR on her but of course that didn’t work because she was already dead. Charity suffered after her daughter was killed having to relive the moment that she went to work and received the phone call that her daughter died and they had her son in custody. Charity even though what she had been through she still visit her son and request that he remains getting the help. He was scheduled for parole at age 33 years old. He claims that he will change his life and become a better person. Charity the mother feels otherwise and thinks that he needs to stay in jail and get the help because he is a sociopath but her mother doesn’t think that he is. Overall the hole documentary was worth seeing and there was so much detail to it.