Documentary Review
I watched Into the Abyss by Werner Herzog the other day. This film appealed to me because it took place so close the where I live. The filmmaker made many choices that I admire, such as conducting interviews ion many different settings with relatives of everyone involved in the crime. The film took us through the home of the crime, and clips of police video were cut in to show the differences between the house at the time of the crime and the house today. The film was interspersed with crime scene photos from everywhere the boys went.
One thing that I found very interesting was the different placement of the interviewees. Many of those who were interviewed were incarcerated at the time of filming, and it was cool to see the different ways that the interviews had to be conducted with the different barriers was very interesting. My favorite camera technique was when interviews got more tense, the camera would cut closer to the face of the interviewees, creating a sense of interest in the minds of the viewers. The splicing of the interviews with Burkett and his son really created a sense of the family that was never really there.
A lot of the interviews that Herzog conducts are littered with the question "describe it". I think this choice was made because Herzog wants the interviewees to really delve into what they are talking about and become emotional. He seems to ask very personal questions that could make some people uncomfortable, and more than once those who are interviewed start crying.
I don't think my documentary will be as deep or emotional as this was. I want my doc to be more upbeat and about the positives of the world. I would like to employ some of the same camera techniques, and f the doc was longer, I would like to divide it into chapters like Herzog did.
