Documentary Media

A Tumblr Project by Melissa Eshaghbeigi for MIT 3832G

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

"The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions." - Ed Norton 

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

[karencarpenters]

up close and personal

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

"I make projects that explore the relationship between humans and technology, incorporating computer science, statistics, storytelling, visual art, and other techniques. I see our species evolving into a single meta-organism, brought to life by the Internet, even as we live our individual lives, searching for meaning and beauty. My projects straddle these scales of existence—from the planetary to the personal."

- Jonathan Harris

[filippospiezia]

Shape of Story from Second Story on Vimeo.

Shape of Story invited audience members to participate in a purposeful interactive screening to spark conversation. Using a smartphone-enabled web application designed and developed by Second Story, the audience was asked to mark moments of emotional impact while watching seven short films. We limited the level of engagement during the screening to a simple gesture: a tap.

[drewvigal]

Follow @filippospiezia.

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Really interesting interactive audience strategy. Does this add or take away from the film experience? Imagine if we had this technology for MIT 3832!

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Life In A Day: Filmed By You. Really cool documentary produced by Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald featuring footage from 80,000 submissions. The film depicts what happened on July 24, 2010 from 192 countries in the world. Full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFVr_cJJIY

[janedoesnthelp]

[daniellamit]

Carpenter’s Fashion Returning?

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Hey Harris, I Love Your Work

This isn't your typical documentary. While I agree that the format had a tendency of taking away from the subject matter, I was thoroughly enthralled by its presentation.

I absolutely loved the construction and conceptualization of this film. I found Jonathan Harris' presentation fascinating and thought provoking in our discussion of documentary media and even in a larger discussion of changing media consumption patterns.

Is this documentary more objective in its presentation of short ten second clips? Can viewers gain a better understanding of a subject through this strategy? Harris presents these women in settings at work, off work and in between. The ten second clips felt like sound bytes into these women lives. Are these presentations more authentic or even further constructed? Can identity be properly conveyed and performed in such short frames?The film felt hyperreal and voyeuristic - I felt like I was toying around, peaking into these women's lives but I kind of enjoyed being granted the opportunity to explore footage on my own terms. This choppy format made me feel slightly more connected to the material and the women.

I absolutely love the interactive component of the documentary. The audience is forced out of a passive viewing and given the opportunity to become a director of sorts. The entire project was filled with novel documentary media strategies which I just found so creative. I also found this strategy a modern day interpretation of Studs Terkel's work in some way. These women are providing are their oral history yet its being reconstructed and rearranged by a number of people.

After four years in MIT, I am always curious about the ever changing media landscape and I really appreciate what Harris has done in light of this. By charging and limiting the number of views per day on an online forum, I think Harris was able to elevate a discussion of new media consumption online. This film has challenged my preconceived notions of not just what a documentary can be but how media can be released in this new age of media consumption. Can this be a viable means of releasing movies online in general? I wonder...

  Honestly, I just really like it when people play around with media conventions.

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Get's me every single time....

[kristyweddel]

“I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade… unprecedented in the history of cinema.” – Werner Herzog

“Like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the...

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Probably one of the most startling scenes for me in this film - so incredibly disturbing and twisted.

[laurenmcv]

Humans of Western

Capturing hopes, dreams, and aspirations at Western University….

Hey look, we have our very own Studs Terkel wandering around campus!

[tribeca]

[documentingjoffe]

Let’s play a game called, what’s the most disturbing part of this film?

[drewheb]

All. 

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

The Act Of Killing Reviewed

Critics Consensus: Raw, terrifying, and painfully difficult to watch, The Act of Killing offers a haunting testament to the edifying, confrontational power of documentary cinema.

Found the multiple perspectives rather interesting, especially the very few who did not like the film.

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

#Selfies TedTalk

Toying with the concept of documentary media by evaluating it through self-representation and the documentation of the self. This video is a discussion of the aesthetic of this medium and the notion of the creator as subject.

Can we consider the selfie documentary media? Urbanski's comparison of the selfie to renaissance portrait painting and art history blur our already very open ended understanding of documentary media.

Can documenting ourselves, documenting our realities, documenting where we are and so on be a digital and user generated form of the documentary media? 

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

PBS documentary on youth, identity and "like culture" on social media and how advertisers are benefiting from this immaterial labor. 

[melissaeshaghbeigi]

Studs Terkel

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.