Research/ Docs viewed in class

 Truth is, I was pretty green going into the documentary process.

I had such a set expectation of what the structure had to be and what the conventions are, that I didn't realize there were many facets of a documentary that I was completely disregarding. 

Before our lessons, I believed that a good documentary should always provide statistics and good old empirical evidence.  However, the more we watched documentaries, the more they became about sharpening perspectives and shedding light on human experiences, and less reliant on regurgitating statistics that won't really suffice in making people feel drawn to the piece or connected to the story.

As part of our curriculum, we were required to view Opinion Docs from the New York Times. I viewed The Final Chapter and it opened my mind to all of the different types of stories and creative liberty that comes from the documentary process. It's much more fluid and emotion driven that I grew so inspired.

These Op Docs redefined my view of documentaries and showed me how the simplest of stories can truly make an impact; they showed me that not everything had to speak on topics of such a large scale. 

Op-Doc; The Final Chapter 

This Op Doc is so beautiful and such a great example of how the simplest stories in life can be so meaningful for a documentary.

 I learned quickly that more than being informational, it's about exposing audiences to a slice of life.   Every documentary has a bias, tone, and story to tell. I'm really grateful that I was able to expand my knowledge on this topic and open my mind up to a plethora of ways in which a story can be told; it redefined in my mind that there are so many more heartwarming, simple stories worth telling. 

This documentary was such a beautiful example of how a random selection of videos displaying the acts of graffiti can be strewn together to tell a consistent story of the life of an art form that is often misunderstood, and frowned upon. It's evident that Exit Through the Gift Shop did the best it could to tell the story of graffiti authentically, and it's one of my all time favorite documentary viewings we've had in our AICE Media class.