For my final project I decided to re-edit my first documentary activity mode because I wasn’t satisfied with the edit and wanted to use the extra length to better show off the observational mode in the story. Also, since we hadn’t dived deep into the participational mode yet when I first made this, I wanted to come back to this so I could use some of the aspects of the participational mode in my editing to more fully capture the kind of story that I intended to tell with my documentary.
 

The documentary Grey Gardens heavily influenced me while I was in the process of filming this documentary. I was fascinated by it and was really interested in trying to capture the reality of chaotic family dynamics in my film. The short length of 2-3 minutes, however, did not give me enough time to focus on anything except for my primary subject, which was Logan playing the piano, in the original edit. I also put in some footage of the dogs getting fed into the film because I was inspired by the minutia of the raccoons getting fed bread in Grey Gardens and wanted to try something somewhat similar in this.

Because of this originally too short length, it was out of necessity that I lengthened this film. The extra time gave my documentary room to breathe, and it made it so I could give a fuller picture of the moments leading up to the piano recital, and it allowed me to show off one of the things I had initially intended to show—the chaotic household. It made it so I could bring the chaos into the doc without exploiting the audience with fast paced cuts to make them feel like there was all this tension and chaos, because that would feel like I was forcing a more fictional, heighted state of the reality of the matter. I wanted the audience to see the reality for how it was in these earlier moments of the film, so I drew out the scenes so the audience could see my parents fighting and the dogs running around and give a better sense of having to make the dinner and having to feed the dogs and seeing the cat or seeing that it was also Logan’s birthday, but he had to spend more time worrying about performing at the recital or worrying that a dog would eat his cake than get to spend enjoying his birthday. 

I will now explain some aspects of what makes this observational and what makes this participational. I will begin with explaining the observational mode elements.

To start off, I never interacted with any of my subjects and never gave any of them directions on what they should be doing. I also never orchestrated anything to happen on the camera and never interacted with the camera as if it were my audience in any way—I did my best to be a fly on the wall just listening and watching. The closest thing to a direction I ever gave was I asked my main subject, Logan, if I could film him as he practiced the piano for his recital later in the day.

Since I could not orchestrate anything or manipulate the outcome of the performance, I could not plan out or stage/storyboard any of my shots in the film. Every shot was just composed the way I was experiencing it in real time. 

The film follows Logan on his journey to perform at the Halloween Piano Recital, so it was edited to follow him and his struggles, vices, and distractions he encounters as he gets there. This makes the film feel closer to experiencing life in real time because it attempts to keep the essence of the emotions of what happened at the time of it getting shot, like when he played the piano and drowned out his parents arguing in the background, or when he heard a different kid playing his song after the recital was over and his face carried the feeling of the scene even though time was condensed on screen.

Another way my film engaged with the Observational Mode was with its utilization of portable technologies. Since this was shot on my phone, I was able to move freely around the place which put no limits on the things Logan could do in the film. I could follow him anywhere. When I followed Logan up to the piano during the recital, it reminded me of the example we watched in class where someone followed JFK with a camera through a crowd of people as he walked onto stage. I also believe that shooting this movie on my phone made all of the people in the film act closer to their true selves. Because phones are not as invasive as cameras and when you put a camera in someone’s face, they get shy, but it felt negligible doing this shoot, which helps it fit even more with the Observational Mode since it fortified the “fly on a wall” aspect of it.

I will now explain some of the more participational moments that ended up occurring in my documentary.

A few moments of participation show up like when you can see me recording my brother in the reflection of the piano, or when I accidentally show myself in the mirror as I walked up to get the shot of him walking into the kitchen. But these are rather small moments. 

There are also pretty much all of the moments that include the dogs. The dogs don’t even show up in the original cut of this film. I decided to show them for a few reasons: the first being that it brought in more of the chaos that both my brother and my mother were experiencing before the recital. The second reason, though, is where the participatory aspect really comes in. My second reason is that the dogs don’t have any concept of what a camera is or what a documentary is. Since they don’t have this level of awareness, they lack the filter that every human instinctually puts on when they know they’re being filmed. The dogs look at me—they acknowledge me. They come to my feet, they beg me for my food, and they are so interested in me or begging for my attention, that I can’t help but participate. Like when I give one of the dogs a slice of pepperoni. These moments with the dogs help give the audience reminders that they are watching a film that is there because of the person behind this camera, not just watching from the view of an omniscient 3rd person like most fiction films are.

The biggest example of participational mode in the film is the recital itself, and the final sequence. The moment I show the graphics of the Dodgers games on the screen, the film no longer can be called an objective view of the reality of what happened. What the audience is now watching, is my view of this reality. I force my ideologies down their throats with the graphics. Me using the analogy of the Dodgers games editing them on screen was me pushing down an ideology not present through simple observation. It had to come from my editing to create this sense. That is when it oversteps into a more participational doc. Even though I am not physically present on screen, I am invisibly present in showing you a truth while not objective but more reflective on how he plays the piano. It was to show that he is in fact good at the piano. That night and that song just wasn’t for him. 

It also illustrates why his performance wasn’t as good as it should’ve been. He had a lot of unnecessary pressures affecting him for his low stakes recital—loud family, parental drama, unwelcome guests, rowdy dogs, his favorite baseball team losing their lead in the World Series, and his brother (me) in his face filming him for 3 straight hours. But when he’s in the zone playing what he wants to play, he’s amazing. There are truths that cannot be shown in a purely observational film. These truths are subjective, sure, but they are more real than objective reality. That is why I dug somewhat into the participatory mode in this observational documentary.