The Aim Was Song

The Doc opens with old war footage with layered in sound. I quickly found myself back in that era, experiencing the bombings through the eyes of the observer who shot that film. It’s just as – or more – powerful without the massive explosions done in After Effects on carefully planned on the set. War is presented to be without discrimination and quite gruesome; burnt and disfigured corpses, dead children, dyeing soldiers, decimated land, plains are being shot down and are seen burning to a crisp. The carefully layered in sound adds a great effect to the overall experience, it really helps to drag me in as a viewer to become captivated. The First shot after the intro is an intimate one with an old vet that allowed all the emotion in his face to be read. He begin by saying a young teen, who was directly beside himself, was suddenly hit in the head with a bullet during trench warfare. I allowed myself to attempt to imagine what that would be like, to really be there experiencing that memory, I can’t connect with it. My reality, all the things I have experienced, is so far from any situation like that. Really powerful introduction.
The Documentary covers the war in a linear fashion with a timeline and headings that clearly show when, where, and what forces are involved. I like how this is done because I don’t have a full understanding of the history behind the war; having each section clearly laid out avoids confusion. Most of the footage of each battle is old footage with layered in sound. It’s an innovative approach that I have never seen before. Watching plenty of war docs and movies, with plenty of stories by old vets is not as powerful as literally seeing it happen. People were literally torn apart, burned to death, and turned into a pulp – seeing the reality is horrifying.
One really well done part was right after the bombings of Pearl Harbour are covered. There are videos and images of joyous happy people while the music builds with a nervous intensity. I think what is being shown is that the possibility of the impending war on homeland for these people is just being realised. I love the way how this is slowly brought out and not simply stated by the narrator. Having said this, there are some areas that I feel could have been expanded on. Hitler’s U-boats were mentioned briefly to have sunk a thousand ships in a year. This is a huge strategic point for the Axis and I would like to know how the allies dealt with the Boats and maybe more of where they were intercepting the carriers crossing the Atlantic. After 1000 ships were sunk, the allies avoid the problem by going at night. It seems odd – 1000 ships is quite a bit of men/firepower to simply fix the problem by departing a few hours later.
Ken Burns shows his excellent storytelling ability with this documentary: it excels in all aspects from editing, the layout, the voiceover, the old vet interviews, emotional music (at the right times), and layered in sound. I only wish I saw the whole thing!
The documentary Straight Out of LA by ICE Cube takes a much different approach. The first thing I notice is all a lot of flashy animations that don’t really work for me. The second thing I noticed is that they did the Ken Burns effect on all the stills which is ironic because it is him we are comparing to. Ice Cube features himself , and opens with, what I found, corny introduction, “if you don’t like rap of football you’re going to like this”. There’s an excellent series of documentaries by Shane smith on VBS.com (they also have a new show on mtv at 10:00) where the directors/producers feature themself and it is done really well – almost like an intense/awesome news report. Another one is Chris Rock’s documentary on Black Woman’s hair (definitely an awesome documentary). However, It didn’t work for Straight out of LA for a few reasons: most of his commentary didn’t add any information but restated what just happened, his commentary with Snoop Dog was obviously planned – he directed obvious questions at him and it was sort of awkward, most of his comments I found just didn’t add anything but took away from the mood created by the real people getting interviewed – actually I would go as far as to say it reminded me of those TV shows for children where the host is dressed in a crazy banana outfit with monkey puppets and other animals running around and she is narrating/singing all her actions – really awkward to watch.
I was also unclear on what the documentary was about. Ice Cube opens with saying it’s about rap and football and if you don’t like either, you’re going to like this. For me, this is how it seems: The documentary is about a football team but this is periodically broken up with the history of rap which is occasionally broken with Ice Cubes history and then the rap history is applied to football but the football history gets intense and interesting then Ice cube interrupts with some story of himself. I didn’t feel a strong flow. However, having said this there we’re definitely some high points. The interviews with the ex sport stars were done really well. The bright – but not to bright – back round and the camera angles where pretty interesting. One shot I have never seen on a documentary (I have on commercials) was a quick one with only half of the mans face with an unsteady camera. It was interesting to listen to each of the players own take on the same point in history, which was followed by old photo’s and clips – really well done.
The sound is excellent , good quality on the high and low points of the story. The video quality is also excellent. When I think of the video quality I can’t help but think of Al Davis’ face and the way his mouth moves when he talks – makes for an interesting person to interview even if he talks about boring subjects.
When comparing Straight out of LA to Ken Burns’ World War II I would have to say that Burns’ ability to tell a story wins it. I watch a documentary because I want to learn something, I want to see interesting people say interesting things and I want to see things that I don’t see in my everyday life. Straight out of LA had the potential but didn’t capitalise.