In the Age of the AI bubble, but long before this, photographers and camera operators have been vanishing from television studios as well as from events. Where you would have hired a camera operator and video editor you now hire a video editor/graphist because video editing has moved from editing video footage to creating graphics filled videos. This is part of why I became disenchanted with video and why I pivoted towards media asset management and self-hosting.
I watched J’ai perdu de vue le paysage at Vision Du Réel last week and I don’t know whether I like or dislike this documentary, ironically for the very topic that it is exploring. The idea of the eternal return, repeated over, and over.
The premise of the documentary was simple. “I have a neighbour and I want to make a documentary about him preparing his next show”, except that inspiration is hard to find, and then the pandemic comes in and scuppers plans for the show to take place, and then there is uncertainty during lockdowns, and the wait for public life to be rebooted, and then the show takes place.
Vision Du Réel is a documentary film festival that takes place every year, or almost. It is an opportunity to watch documentary films on a screen bigger than a laptop or television. Many films are screened with the director/producer but they are also screened a second time. Yesterday I went to watch The Mountains Won’t Move. It is an observational, cinéma verité style film.
There is no narration. There are no subtitles.
Last night I watched the first episode of a documentary series on the Vietnam war, made by Apple TV. It’s eighteen hours of documentaries covering different aspects of the conflict.
In the first episode they speak about boots on the ground and tunnel rats. Through the exploration of this topic we see some footage of traps being prepared and some footage from within the underground tunnels.
In the footage we see an operating theatre in an undergorund room.
Last night I watched two episodes in a documentary series about a brief history of cars. In the first documentary we see a discussion about the history of cars from the 19th century to modern day with the use of archive footage. In the second we see how the car helped with consumerism. In the third I think they discuss the mental health consequences of cars.
What makes this documentaries series interesting is that it goes into a lot of depth, without any sensationalism.
Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.
For a few days I have been watching a few documentary series on Netflix. Big Timber is one of them. Usually I like nature that is untouched. I like to see trees that are standing tall and proud, not on their sides, ready to be chopped up into wood for housing.
It is because I like to see living trees that I started watching the series, and then gave up.
Years ago I walked around Herculaneum and was impressed by how well preserved it was. I could see wood, plaster and more. You could see how the rooms looked. It is much smaller than Pompei but it is still worth visiting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvFlEJpuTfo
Within the last week Honeypot Originals have released a number of documentaries. Each episode covers a different JavaScript Framework. So far that have Vue.js, Ember.js, Elixir and GraphQL. Each of these documentaries is about half an hour long and interviews some of the key players. What is nice about these documentaries is that they take names and projects that may be familiar to us, but add faces and context to them.
Roman remains may be found and excavated but sometimes nature reclaims them. These ruins were discovered in 1882 but nature returned and hid them safely away again. Such tweets should inspire archeological departments, and film and TV or BA Media Studies to document the process of re-excavating these ruins, with photogrammetry and other modern tech used.
https://twitter.com/MSFMagic/status/1493179373431803904