Category: Film

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Film News Reading

Directing Documentary Productions

Interview at Shaolin Temple, China

Documentary Directing and Storytelling by James R (Jim) Martin

The best directors understand the traditions and aesthetics of the medium in which they are working. They also have an understanding of the crafts involved and may have worked at some of those jobs themselves. The focus of Documentary Directing and Storytelling, is on directing, but also includes information that experienced directors should know about the process of constructing a documentary story.

New Book

Documentary Directing and Storytelling, written by James R (Jim) Martin offers a learning experience and an exploration into directing documentary story projects.

The book looks at fundamental and advanced ideas about actuality documentary filmmaking and nonfiction storytelling of all types using film, video, multimedia and other mediums.

 Documentary Directing and Storytelling is a great read for anyone with a strong interest in documentary or nonfiction storytelling. There are many critical reviews of documentary films and the stories they tell from a directing and filmmaking perspective.

Available at Amazon.com  Print and/or Digital

Available at Apple iBooks

“I’m a filmmaker. I’m an artist. I’ve chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still life or landscapes.” — Ken Burns

“I think it’s inevitable that people will come to find the documentary a more compelling and more important kind of film than fiction. Just as in literature, as the taste has moved from fiction to nonfiction, I think it’s going to happen in film as well. In a way you’re on a serendipitous journey, a journey, which is much more akin to the life experience. When you see somebody on the screen in a documentary, you’re really engaged with a person going through real life experiences. So for that period of time, as you watch the film, you are, in effect, in the shoes of another individual. What a privilege to have that experience.”  — Albert Maysles

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Arts Film News Reading

New Book on Interviewing and Listening by James R Martin

Actuality Interviewing and Listening techniques allow the subject or subjects of a documentary or nonfiction film to tell their own story in a first person narration. A third person voice over narrator may not be needed. Actuality Interviewing is a form of conducting interviews that relies heavily on the interviewer’s ability to truly listen to the interviewees and to know when to ask the right question. Communication occurs on more levels than what is spoken.

A film or video documentary usually has two primary components: action and interviews. Of course music and effects also play a role in telling the nonfiction story. But interviewing takes the place of dialog in a fiction film, so it serves the same function in a medium that relies on action to keep an audience engaged.

Many people think that they are listening to another person or a piece of music while they are also thinking about a conversation they had earlier that day or what they are going to say next. Listening requires more then basic attention to someone speaking or a piece of music.

Actuality Interviewing and Listening explores the connection between conducting an interview and listening on all levels. Anyone who conducts interviews or gives interviews, for any reason, will benefit from reading this book.

Available from Amazon.com in print or digital.  Also available from Apple iBooks

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Arts Film Music News

Eight Days A Week -The Beatles – The Touring Years Review by James R (Jim) Martin

beatles-8-dayposterJust when you thought you knew everything about the Beatles along comes Ron Howard with a new traditional documentary film focusing on the Beatles in the beginning, getting underway, then moving on to the years of touring the world, reaching crowds so large they needed super big venues like Shea Stadium  housing 50,000 fans at a time on some occasions.

Eight Days A Week asks why, and looks at how the Beatles became such a huge sensation and success. Many possibilities are explored using actual footage of the young Beatles, combined with performance, studio sessions, film clips with behind the scenes from Help, Hard Days Night, and coverage of events, as the Beatles phenomenon grows. Some interviews appear to have been recorded back in the sixties and pulled from archival sources, although there are also good contemporary interviews in the film with Paul McCartney, Ringo Star and others.  ( Read More – watch Trailer)

 

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years
Directed by Ron Howard
Produced by Brian Grazer Ron Howard Scott Pascucci Nigel Sinclair
Written by Mark Monroe
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Film Life Observations Relationships

Meet The Patels Review

MeetPatelscovThe best documentaries both inform and entertain. The viewer learns something new and enjoys the experience. Meet The Patels, winner of the audience award at the 2014 Los Angles Film Festival, achieves these goals as it explores the pressure on Indian American families to maintain their culture and traditions like marriage, when dealing with their American assimilated, second generation children.

This documentary is about Indian Americans, but it is also representative of what happens with other ethnic groups that have resettled in North and South America over the years. All ethnic groups coming to the United States have experienced the pressures of assimilation.

To view the entire review by Jim Martin go to Meet The Patels at J R Martin Media

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Contemplation Film Spirituality

Women And Spirituality — The Goddess Trilogy

WOMEN AND SPIRITUALITY THE GODDESS TRILOGY is a three-hour, three-part series made between 1987 and 1992 sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada.  Part 1 – GODDESS REMEMBERED looks at prehistory and evidence,  beginning with stone age culture, where carved Goddess sculpture and cave paintings  are found in France. The Mother Earth creation story, along with the nurturing role of women in peaceful hunter gather groups is established.

To read the entire review go to  J R Martin Media Documentary Reviews.

 

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Film News Relationships

Cutie And The Boxer – Review by Jim Martin

CutieAndBoxercovCutie And The Boxer is a moving and insightful journey into the lives of two artists  in a relationship that has evolved over forty years.  The story begins with the eightieth birthday of Ushio Shinohara. He and his wife Norika celebrate this event by lighting a candle on a small cake.  Ushio and Norika are both artists, married now for 40 years. There’s about a twenty-year age difference between the two. They met when she was an art student who had just arrived in NYC from Japan.  Norika has lived in Ushio’s shadow for their entire relationship and she is now struggling to find  her own identity. Up until recently she has largely neglected her own work to support Ushio and raise a son. She harbors some justifiable resentment about this that manifests itself in her pushiness and her controlling their domestic life. But even with all the stress and issues, there’s an obvious bond between these two people.

The title of the documentary, Cutie And The Boxer, is connected to one of Ushio’s painting techniques, which is to put on boxing gloves, dip them in paint and punch the canvas from left to right. He’s still doing this at age eighty. He also does sculptures and other paintings.  Norika paints and draws.

To read entire review and watch trailer go to Cutie and The Boxer.

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.

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Contemplation Film

With One Voice – Awaken To The Beauty That Unites Us All – Review by Jim Martin

With One Voice explores the world of mysticism and it’s role in spirituality and religion. The documentary is a quest to learn from mystics, representing major religions, about their own spiritual journey and what knowledge they have gained. In the words of Father Keating in the film, “We are all mystics seeking to solve the mysteries of existence.”

The filmmakers who created With One Voice have produced a documentary that is not an external point-of-view of mysticism. Even though, it does use a narrator, Peter Coyote, it also makes extensive  first person interviews.  The unique quality of this story is that its point-of-view, while still subjective, is from the inside looking out.  Viewing the documentary brings the audience into the world of mystic spirituality, religion and to some extent exposes the viewer to the notion of inner peace.

Many people like to say that they are “spiritual.” rather than religious.  But what does that really mean? What is spirituality?  Where does spirituality begin and religion end? How do spirituality, religion and mysticism relate to each other? In a subtle way the answers to many of these questions are examined in this beautifully shot and edited documentary with original music by Michael Josephs.

The film is divided into eight areas:

To read entire review and view trailer go to: J R Martin Media Documentary Reviews

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Film News

American Experience: Walt Disney — Review by Jim Martin

American-Experience-Walt-Disney-to-Premiere-on-PBS

The PBS – American Experience: Walt Disney documentary provides an uncensored, well researched, exploration of Walt Disney, the man, his work, and his passion for achieving goals.  The 221 minute documentary looks into Walt Disney’s contributions to the art of film, his strengths and weaknesses.  The film examines Disney’s great insight into American culture and at other times his opaque insensitivity to historical, political and social issues facing Americans. Walt Disney was an artist and an entrepreneur, greatly aided in his goals by Roy Disney, his brother, who complemented Walt’s obsessive personality with practical nuance.

American Experience: Walt Disney informs and entertains.   It is a great biography of Disney and the development of animated feature films. From a historical filmmaking point of view the documentary is a treasure trove of information, enhanced by the unlimited access given American Experience, to the Disney historical archives. There are photographs, and documentary footage of Walt Disney though out his life. Disney seemed to have someone there taking pictures or shooting activities all the time. The film’s narrative structure is greatly enhanced by this visual actuality of these events. Interviews with those people who knew Walt Disney also help tell the story. There is a linear chronology of Walt Disney’s life contrasted with events around him. Clips from classic Disney films are included throughout the documentary.Disney cover

Walt Disney’s early attempts at creating short cartoons for distribution ultimately lead to Mickey Mouse; demonstrating Disney’s innovation including the first use of audio for an animated short. These early scenes in the documentary may be of particular interest to aspiring filmmakers as well as Disney fans.

One of the most interesting aspects of the documentary is Walt Disney’s idea to create a feature-length animated film that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Because of Disney’s determination to create a perfect, artistic film that transcended the notion that animationsnowwhite was only for cartoons, Snow White took five years to make and greatly exceeded its original budget. When it was finally released it was a huge national and international success. It achieved all that Disney intended, except winning an Oscar for Best Film.  It did win an Oscar for innovation which didn’t really meet Disney’s expectations.

American Experience: Walt Disney is set up in two parts that total four hours. It is well-edited and does not lag or get redundant. In fact there seems to be a pick-up of pace in the last hour to cover  Disney Land creation, it’s success, the beginnings of Epcot, Disney World in Florida and Walt’s untimely death at age 65 from Lung Cancer. This is a biographical film about Walt Disney; however, it might have included more about his brother and alter ego Roy Disney. This is not to say Roy’s important role in Walt Disney’s life is ignored. It’s that Roy seems to always be in the shadows making things happen and trying to rein in his brother. It would have been interesting to know more about Roy and how he accomplished these things. Perhaps Roy Disney is another story.

The documentary does not gloss over Walt Disney’s problems with his employees, unions, his obsession with communists everywhere, or his insensitivity to minorities and racial stereotypes like those seen in Song of the South and other Disney films, television programs and other endeavors. In many ways it seems from watching the documentary that Walt Disney mirrored the cultural biases of his generation.

 American Experience: Walt Disney does what an excellent biographical documentary should do. It explores reality, in this case the life of Walt Disney, with the goal of understanding who he was as a person and what he created during his lifetime. The successes, the failures and personality traits of a creative human being in the context of the world they lived in.

 American Experience: Walt Disney aired on PBS in mid September 2015. It is available on Apple TV, PBS online and on DVD from PBS and Amazon.

Review by James R (Jim) Martin – Documentary Filmmaker and Author

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPNOBBoZqIo

 

DVD

American Experience: Walt Disney

Review also appears on jrmartinmedia.com

Categories
Arts Film News

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

jHubbard
L. Ron Hubbard

“A civilization without insanity, without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology.” –L. Ron Hubbard

The Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief documentary is based on a book written by Lawrence Wright, titled Going Clear: “Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.” Scientology objects to the book and the documentary. As recently reported (8.5.2015) by the Guardian: the church, from its Los Angeles HQ, has denounced the film as a “one-sided, bigoted propaganda built on falsehoods” and informed by former members – whom it calls “misfits”.

In April, the church said in a statement: “The Church of Scientology will be entitled to seek the protection of both UK and Irish libel laws in the event that any false or defamatory content in this film is broadcast within these jurisdictions.”

Going Clear is a well-made film. Good editing and use of archival material and interviews. There is a lot of footage of Scientology events and places. Scientology officially calls it “propaganda.” But that label is not appropriate unless it can be shown that the filmmakers are misrepresenting the truth and hiding their true point-of-view (POV). A documentary film is not propaganda simply because you don’t agree with it’s premise or reality. One definition of a propaganda film is that is was made by a government, with a political philosophy or by an institution with a mission. Going Clear does not meet these criteria.

See the full Review and Trailer for this HBO documentary film at:  JRMartinMedia.com

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Film Health People

YOUR INNER FISH

Your innerfishYour Inner Fish is a well made television style documentary, three episode series.  Episode 1 – Your Inner Fish, Episode 2 – Your Inner Reptile and Episode 3 – Your Inner Monkey.  All three episodes are entertaining, informative, and offer a trip through time going back to when prehistoric fish swam in the oceans and animal life on dry land apparently didn’t exist. The story delves into areas of research that have changed what was thought to be true up until now.

The Your Inner Fish  series is one from which everyone can learn. The documentary presents facts and offers evidence to support the ideas explored.  In addition to Neil Shubin, a Fish Paleontologist, a number of well know specialists in related areas are interviewed or are followed as they go from lab to remote locations to do their work of scientifically exploring the origins of the human primate. Paleontology, Anatomy, Biology and other disciplines are relevant, important contributors to understanding human evolution.

TO VIEW ENTIRE REVIEW GO TO: JRMARTINMEDIA.COM