Last night I watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and Once; two movies that allow me to expand on some thoughts from the last post.
The King of Kong is a documentary about an informal competition between two men to get the highest score on Donkey Kong. The original record was set in 1983 by Billy Mitchell and stood for over 20 years before a serious challenger came along. The movie follows Steve Wiebe, the challenger, who sets a new record at home only to have his score rejected by a refereeing organization because they think the motherboard in his arcade cabinet had been tampered with. Weibe subsequently beats the old record again in public on a verified machine, but is immediately upstaged by Mitchell who sent his own questionable video tape to the referees. When the Guinness Book of World Records decides to include the highest score on Donkey Kong in their next book, Wiebe tries again to beat the score in public.
I really enjoyed this movie. It follows a fascinating cast of characters through some serious conflict. The fact that the conflict is about video games adds to the movie rather than detracting. The men and women involved in this movie care about their high scores not simply as a few hours of entertainment but as world records worthy of comparison to the 100 meter dash and the marathon. And if you watch the movie, you will find there is little reason to disagree. High scores are serious business.
Once is billed as a modern day musical. The main character is a nameless street musician. He survives by fixing vacuum cleaners but prefers to spend his time playing standards for passersby. At night when the crowds are smaller, he plays his own music. This attracts the attention of a nameless girl; a Czech immigrant who plays the piano. They spend a week together sharing music. I also really enjoyed this movie. It is about being lonely and finding companionship. It is about the process of creating music and how music plays a role in our life.
What really surprised me about Once was that it was shot in a documentary style. The director and producers of this movie want to call it a musical, but it does not function like most musicals. In the standard musical, Rent for example, the characters go through dialog and then burst into songs at dramatic moments. The songs may emphasize particular points but are often self contained and in so way independent of the drama going on. In other words, the standard musical is supposed to present a story and a set of songs that are together but that are not necessarily related in any important way.
Once, however, presents the music as an integral part of the story. The songs that the characters sing are not merely entertaining props to between story elements but are creations of the characters and an essential part of the story. That is how Once manages to survive being shot in a documentary style. It is presented as if it is documenting the actions of these characters and their creation of the music.
In my last post I stated tried to argue that television has improved in part because it is trying harder to convince the audience that a show is something that is happening. Lost achieves this by shooting outside and on location even though it uses traditional film techniques. Other shows such as The Office achieve this by shooting in a documentary style. So, what is a documentary style and why can it help in fictional storytelling?
Of course, in actual documentaries such as The King of Kong, the story is told in a documentary style. At first this means camera work that is occasionally unsteady. Unsteady camera work is the result of two things: lower production values and the act of recording events as they happen. Almost no documentaries, if any at all, are shot on film by professional camera operators for the simple reason that it would be extremely expensive to do so. More importantly, however, a camera operator in a documentary will not be able to perfectly anticipate how events will play out. A sudden move of the camera may be necessary to capture an unexpected event or to react to a person saying something that is potentially important.
Second, documentaries are shot at a distance from the immediate subject of the film. In trying to document some event, the camera crew must provide some distance to the people who are participating in the event. This is done, I assume, in order to allow the people the opportunity to act as they would if the documentary crew were not there, and thus provide a more 'true' representation of what happened. In practice this means that while shooting outside, the environment is allowed to intrude into the movie--people, noises, and some events that are external to the movie are often captured by the camera.
In interior scenes, documentaries are often shot from a perspective that is internal to the action such that events are perceived to be happening around the camera and not merely in front of it. Again, this is a result of being at actual locations where people are going about business that is independent of the film.
Third, since documentaries are designed to capture events as they happen, the filmmakers rely on ambient lighting and do not provide makeup or costumes to the subjects. The subjects are to be presented in a naturalistic manner.
Finally, documentaries often use direct interviews with the subjects to explain events in the film.
Three of these elements of documentaries were used successfully in Once. The camera work was occasionally unsteady, which suggested the camera was reacting to events as they happened. The subjects were often shot at a distance with intruding extras and external events, and from within the action in interior shots. The filmmakers effectively used ambient lighting and were careful to present the characters in normal clothing and makeup. They did not use interviews with the characters in the way that The Office does to complete the illusion of a documentary.
I wouldn't be so stupid as to claim that a documentary style is always a good way to go with a fictional story, but it does have some advantages. The above elements of documentary style filmmaking are the natural result of documentaries. The camera work, space, naturalistic presentation of the subjects and use of ambient lighting is the result of documentary filmmaking. As the audience we have learned to interpret these elements are reflecting actual events. Thus, in a very simple manner, fictional films shot in a documentary style use these elements as cues to the audience that what they are watching is something that actually happened. The elements of documentaries are used to reinforce the illusion of the scripted story and that can help us to suspend our disbelief. This was all very effective in Once.
It can help, but not always. Cloverfield stands as an obvious counterpoint to what I have just said. Cloverfield was shot on film by a professional camera crew. The professional crew was told to shoot it in a way that seemed amateurish, because the character who was supposed to be using the camera was not supposed to be good with it. But in Cloverfield, the unsteady camera work often failed to reinforce the reality of the story, because it was both too professional and too amateurish.
One on hand, the camera-character was often unable to keep the horizon in the most simple circumstances. Thus, we got dramatically angled shots of other characters even when there was no reason for the character holding the camera to hold it at a severe angle. Rather than suggesting amateurishness, it suggested a professional trying to emulate an amateur, which is what is exactly what happened.
On the other hand, when extreme circumstances did occur in the film, the camera-character was able to keep filming. For example, the camera successfully follows the other characters as they run across a street just a few yards from the gigantic monster attacking the city. With the expansion of home video TV shows, especially those featuring videos of extreme sports, videos of criminals, and videos of simply stupid behavior, I have come to expect a person operating a camcorder to drop the camera when some extreme event happens. The fact that the camera-character in Cloverfield was able to keep filming while running from a giant monster again served to reinforce the fact that the movie was being shot by a professional cameraman.
So, it is not simply a matter of using a documentary style, but as with everything else, it matters how it is done. Cloverfield failed where Once succeeded.
