Although I have a great love for documentaries, I have never had the urge to make any myself over the past 3 years studying Media Production – hopefully my first leap into this genre will be successful when I head towards producing my final project.
There are a few documentary makes I respect greatly and hopefully watching over their films more will give me ideas and influence me to create a good piece in the future.
Louis Theroux
Bit of a clichéd choice for most media students I’ve found, but there’s a reason for that, the guy is a fantastic journalist and documentary maker. The way he can earn the trust of his subjects in these documentaries is out of this world – his recent series where he is filming gang members in Philladelphia and then Johanasbourg – some of these show of their firearms and admit to murders to Theroux and I believe it is due to his “typical English charm” – they begin to trust him and then sometimes forget they are being filmed. I find he comes across as really “dumb” or “simple” at times, faking naivety to get people to underline really ridiculous things.
Morgan Spurlock
Like many I first heard of Spurlock when seeing his documentary film Super Size Me:
Super Size Me is a 2004 documentary film written, produced, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock’s film follows a 30-day time period (February 2003) during which he subsists exclusively on food and items only purchased from McDonald’s. The film documents this lifestyle’s drastic effects on Spurlock’s physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry’s corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit. During the filming, Spurlock dined at McDonald’s restaurants three times per day, sampling every item on the chain’s menu at least once. He also super sized his meal every time he was asked. Spurlock consumed an average of 20.92 megajoules or 5,000 kcal (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment. As a result, the then-32-year-old Spurlock gained 24½ lbs. (1¾ stone, 11.1 kg), a 13% body mass increase, and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and liver damage. It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose the weight he gained.
The lengths that Spurlock went to, to prove his point about America – and the world’s – eating habits was outstanding. He put his body and health on the line and though very extreme, it made huge changes in the McDonalds menus (removing the super size options) and way of thinking about food – adding more salads, etc. to the menu.
More work from Spurlock that I admired was a television series he produced, titled 30 Days. In 30 Days, either Spurlock, a friend or a celebrity living a life very different to their own for 30 days. These have included: living on minimum wage, being in prison, a Christian living as a Muslim. Similiarly to Super Size Me – his drive to throw himself full force into these projects has greatly admired me.
It also shows you don’t have to go to massive extremes to create good documentary television, living on minimum wage is a simple idea and very easy to produce and can have a great impact on society also, if the right people see these documentaries and give good backing to a campaign, people with power may rethink how the poor and working class are treated.
Seth Gordon – The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters
This is a low-budget documentary that I watched earlier this year. A synopsis:
A middle-school science teacher and a hot sauce mogul vie for the Guinness World Record on the arcade classic, Donkey Kong.
In 1982, LIFE Magazine assembled the worlds greatest gamers for a photo shoot that would become the center spread of their 1982 Year-In-Photos edition. Billy Mitchell, who would later be named the Gamer of the Century, was one of the invitees.
Mitchell, the World Record holder on Centipede, had been tracking the score on Donkey Kong, and knew he could take that title as well. In front of the 20 best gamers in the world, Billy scored 874,300 points, a record many thought would never be broken.
In 2003, 35 year old family man Steve Wiebe, after losing his job at Boeing, found solace in Donkey Kong. Steve stumbled upon Billy Mitchells record online, and set out to break it. He began perfecting his game every night after his wife and kids went to bed, and not only surpassed Billys record, but ended up with a thought-to-be-impossible 1,000,000 points.
A tidal wave of media coverage followed, and Steve Wiebe quickly became a celebrity in his hometown of Seattle, WA. He also rediscovered his love for teaching, and regained the respect of all who once doubted him. Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, FL, Billy Mitchell hatched a plan to reclaim his fallen Donkey Kong record
In the months that followed, Steve and Billy engaged in a cross-country duel to see who could set the high score that would be included in the 2007 Guinness World Records book and become The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Along the way, both men learned valuable lessons about what it means to be a father, a husband, and a true champion discovering that you dont always need to win to be a winner.
It doesn’t really sound like an interesting subject matter to most, even to me – a self confessed geek – I thought it wouldn’t be that interesting – but I was very much wrong.
It amazed me how serious these men took the rivalry and lengths they go to get the Donkey Kong World Record, but director Gordon does a fantastic job of editing the piece. He adds great tension and Mitchell comes off as one of the great film “baddies” in his arrogance and, at times, desperation trying keep his record.
It is a fantastic way of turning a run-of-the-mill documentary almost into a drama and though I’m not if it’ll be possible with some of my subject matters – I’m wondering if it is something I may try in the future.
