The Ugly Truth: Performative Documentary

Over the years, cinema itself has begun to become more and more complex. From having multiple genres to advancements with audio and visuals, film has rose itself into an undeniable outlet of creativity, information, and showcase. Documentaries are perhaps one of the fastest growing film genre since the turn of the century. Yet, a special domain of documentaries has been ruled by box office success. It is here that performative documentaries stirred controversies and raised awareness to common issues often overlooked.

The question then becomes: what separates performative and traditional? Documentaries are primarily created in ways of raising awareness and informing the audience of a specific point of view. Like traditional, which strives to feature a point of view and typical chronological series of events, performative poses a problem and provides a solution. Unlike traditional documentary, performative challenges the audience to find meaning from the film. It gives information not with intent to inform, but to choose to agree or disagree.

Throwing away the order of events, credibility, and straight-face approach to a topic, performative adds emotion. It takes any instances of objection to subjective, allowing an aggressive teaching to turn into a passive suggestion. It is a way to approach an audience without coming off as too informative or too preachy.

Above all else, what makes performative documentary a unique mixing pot of information is the combination of resources and styles used. From re-enactment, found footage, recreation and animation, it is the audience’s attention span and interest that is kept in mind by the filmmaker. The tone and delivery of information varies from open voice, narrative, formal, and finally, humor. The notorious Michael Moore, the creator of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, is well-known for gapping the medium between delivery and receiving by using satire and humor to express what could be nearly shocking information.

Moore, with the help of controversial topics, has become a leading filmmaker that’s style is nearly mainstream. His involvement and on-camera time in his documentaries gives personal involvement and importance to the information provided. This is one of the many forms that delivery in performative documentaries takes. His involvement with the victims of the Columbine High School accident marked a change of involvement that many filmmakers did not approach. He had a personal stake, which was to raise awareness of the gun issues in America, and used that to drive and connect his message.

The combination of collages and interviews marks steps towards reflection. The techniques and their weaving into the root of the message. It’s main purpose is to find a way to invoke an emotion and demand we evaluate the knowledge given. It is here that the filmmaker edits content to convey the message they want, as opposed to strictly hard facts. What makes performative documentary unique is this viewpoint: it is an artist giving the option for those to understand, and it is up to the viewer to indulge.

Performative documentary often borders the same advancement as a narrative story. Proposed with a beginning question, the documentary will give details, opinions, and finally, a resolution. Following a sole person or group, audiences are given insight and opinions focused on a person’s struggles and growth, much like a narrative basic story.

With the storytelling process becoming more and more respected in cinema, the honest facts and plain delivery has often been a problem for conveying a message. Reality TV and drama-docs have blurred the line between staged and truth. Yet, performative documentary doesn’t shy away from the root of it’s message, regardless of how entertaining and outrageous the content may be.

Bill Nichols, an American film critic with strong opinions on the evolution of film spoke of how the traditional modes of documentary no longer fit, but performative pulls from those to have a unique flex.

At the end of the day, it is ultimately up to the audience on how successful the message is. Filmmakers use constant ever-changing tactics, modes, theories and ideology to help motivate an emotion. Whether that is negative or positive varies, but the filmmaker was still able to get the message across and digested. That is the ultimate, in my theory, definition of performative. If the documentary can hold attention, deliver information, and allow process, the documentary was a success, regardless of reception. To entertain is to maintain, to maintain entertainment is to inform.

End of the Line

As the class closes and my grades are dangling like a piece of meat above a pit of rabid dogs, I feel like reflecting on what I have learned.

1: Time is opportunity.  With that said, managing my time in school has benefited me to the fullest extent. My projects and my work has been something I am not just relieved to have finished but proud to have created. It has given me a chance to get over a hesitance to achieve greatness in flash: as I have learned the stepping stones towards becoming more comfortable in flash.

2: These files were made for walking, and that is just what they'll do. With a few technical difficulties, I've had files lost, corrupted, and nearly gone forever. It was something that made me panic and worry, yet now, I find myself making daily copies of projects I work on. It will help me develop my comfort as a designer merely by having my work always on hand.

3. If at first you don't succeed,  don't just try; do. I learned to time manage, but also to realize that time won't wait for me. Working in a "crunch" or under extreme pressures are something that I dealt with after my files got corrupted. I was able to stop tip toeing around starting/restarting and work to find a quality finish.

And finally,

4. Never underestimate your passion. Regardless of having a 'try hard' or 'overachieving' tact on all my work, I realize it isn't the way I approach things that is trying hard: it is the world not trying hard enough. I do work that is to be expected: great work. And I let my passion shine. I find myself more comfortable and confident with my speaking skills and my flash skills. That is something I will never let anyone guilt me over.

Confidence in storyboarding

Having the confidence to finish what you start is something I am greatly learning. I feel as, even if I found problems with the assignment, I am a better designer because I stuck to it and made it my own. I took my storyboard and made it into reality. I am extremely proud of myself.

Having the storyboard helped me keep the confidence because if I could draw it on a piece of paper, I could find ways to 1: transition it to motion or 2: figure out a way to better enhance my piece visually in the program itself.

It worked wonders!

Useful color tools.

Even in flash, I've found having a general grasp of colors is something that I as a designer find most important. Colors set the mood and colors influence the way your audience will interpret your work. Colors tend to have the same meaning in a general sense: red for danger, green for go, etc. So here are some useful sites to find a great color scheme for your work -- design, flash, or print!

COLORlovers
The biggest resource community for colour palettes as well as patterns. .

Kuler
From Adobe it pretty much works the same way as COLORlovers where you also create your own schemes or edit others accordingly.

Colorotate
This site is a little more interactive and fun with the 3D elements. In addition there are few fun mixing/blending options.

Color Scheme Designer
The Wheel! A great resource for creating schemes as well options for “light-er” or “dark-er” versions.

Pictaculous
There are a few picture-to-colours applications but this is my favourite as, in my opinion, its most accurate. In addition to finding you colours from an image you’ve uploaded, it suggests other similar colour schemes from Colourlovers and Kuler. You can also download swatch files which I find useful.

Color Palette Generator (DeGraeve.com)
If you’re lazy or don’t have the image on your computer, this site lets you use URL’s instead.

Inspiration

I guess the main thing that keeps me going in a design is how confident I am with the theme of the piece.

Sure, I need to learn to get out of my safe zone.
Sure, I don't want to be defined by one style.
Sure, I hope to grow as a designer and confidently portray any style needed by a client.

But at my current positioning in my academic adventure, I am still dipping my toes in the figurative pool of creativity. Once I'm ready, I'll take the plunge.


As it stands, there are a few things inspiring my project. First, Frank Sinatra's music has been more or less on repeat for the past week. Second, I've watched old sitcoms, especially the opening credits, to get a feel for the style I want my flash piece to be. I Love Lucy, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanne, etc are the ones available to my disposal and I hope to take the same charm they have and produce something great. Third, I think it is important that I've storyboarded and found inspiration in the mere fact I've accomplished drawing out a 3 minute video from start to finish. Confidence can be inspiring too!

Overall, this is proving to be challenging and surely frustrating, however; I do understand the importance and I will work my butt off!

Trial and Error

This is rather frustrating.

A second time, my file has been corrupted. As someone who finds pride in having assignments done early and maintaining the quality expected, I am feeling frustrated. Not only was the file I've put a week of work into done, but it was corrupted and giving me an error upon loading.

Technology, at one point or another, proves to be a pain in the neck but I guess the easiest way to keep optimistic is to recall that  I know how to achieve the look I was going for and the process will be a bit easier the THIRD time around.

I guess I should not feel like a special snowflake and lament that "this wasn't suppose to happen to me" because, really, that kind of ignorance is just begging for karma to swoop down like a hawk. The best I can do is learn from it and realize the frustration doesn't lie on me and I suppose I can learn from this.

Here's to hoping.

Importance of Trying

Over the course of time, it is primarily important to remember that trying is a continuous effort to achieve an end goal. While things may seem easy, when times get tough, putting forth extra effort to try can not only give you results but a sense of satisfaction.

As my adventures into multimedia and Flash continue, I find myself a bit more confident in my time with the program, it still remains frustrating. However, as previously mentioned, it is important to continue trying. What turned into a troublesome struggle, I learned the steps and practices through trying and pushing.

Once I lost my work on a flash assignment due to corruption in the file, I continued to try and make up for the hard work I put in. However, it was easier the second time around. Primarily, it was satisfying to know that I honestly learned the steps as I could easily recreate my work in half the time and better quality.