Blog Post #5: 3/23

I recently watched the film Rust Creek, a film about a girl who gets lost in rural Kentucky and is stranded in the woods after accidentally getting involved with a local crime syndicate. Before I watched it, I had no idea this would be inspiring to my completely unrelated documentary. The aspects of the film I enjoyed the most were the audio and cinematography aspects, which translate well to documentaries no matter what the subject matter is. 

Relating to the blog post on audio I read a couple weeks ago, audio was a very important part of the tension in this movie. Not only did the music push the film in this direction, but the soundscape made anxiety levels rise for me. As I said then, our documentary certainly won't rely on building tension, but this does serve as an example of how sound can be the most important factor in building a mood. If I watched the movie on mute, it would be a completely different experience. This lets me know that while sound may not be the biggest factor in this film, it is certainly something to pay attention to. 

Cinematography was another element of the film that stuck out to me. Various shots were inspiring to me, both in composure and depth of field. This is important to me because although our film is shot digitally in a two-dimensional space, I want to think of the shooting as if it were being done in the real world. When Ross is flying around in this virtual space, he has access to far more angles than would be possible in the real world, so we have limitless options when it comes to this.

Overall, this film was incredibly enjoyable and surprisingly inspiring. It speaks to how much of fictional film translates over to documentary. Most documentaries are fairly naturally shot, but ours especially is very intentional. It offers a much better opportunity to frame everything and not just go with what we have in the moment.