Happy

           For my documentary review I watched a really inspiring, interesting documentary called Happy, directed by Roko Belic. The documentary talks about happiness. It delves into what we consider the definition of happiness, and talks to people all over the world, both people who are happy and those who are unhappy. The film starts off with talking to a man who lives in India. He is a rickshaw driver, meaning he carries people around in cart all day through India. This is his house:

      Although people are rude to him everyday and he caries them around in a cart and lives in a hut made of tarps and ply wood, he says he is the happiest man in the world. The film then steps back and talks to psychologists about what "happy" is. This is the general format as it goes back and forth between psychological explanations and personal stories.
        The documentary includes the three aspects of film: literary, dramatic, and cinematic aspects. The literary aspects include themes and mood. The theme of the film is happiness, and what it takes to achieve happiness. The film develops a sympathetic, kind of sad yet happy mood when it tells the story of a woman who in her youth was considered one of the most beautiful women in the state she lived in. But, when she was in her twenties, she got run over by a truck, which crushed her face. She has had over thirty surgeries, and her face still looks like this:

            However, she says she is much happier than she was before the accident. The film does include a bit of dramatic aspects because there is reenactment of her accident. It more includes cinematic aspects such as unique camera angles. There is a good example of interesting cinematic effect when the documentary focuses on an island off the coast of Japan where the most old people live in one place. A large amount of their population is over 100 years old. The film makers explore the happiness between the 100 year-olds and the young children, by putting the camera from their point of view.
            I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it to anyone who has an hour to spend watching a truly interesting movie. I watched it on Netflix Instant Watch. It was made in 2011. Here is a link to the website for the movie Happy.

Happy. 75 minutes. Not Rated.

Documentaries!

             For this weeks blog post, I figured I would write a little bit about our newest project in media class. A week or two ago, Mr. Mayo assigned us a project where we, in groups of three or four, have to create our own two to three minute documentary on a topic of our choice. My group, which is me, Grace, Samantha, and Sarah, chose to make our documentary on DC street musicians. We are just starting the research phase now, but I'm excited to see how things turn out!

            When doing a little background research, I stumbled upon this video:

          Although this isn't exactly what we are going for in our documentary, this video has a lot of things that I like. The first is the way that the film maker incorporates the street musicians actual music throughout his documentary. Something else that I like about this video is the way that the cinematographer uses split screens. In my opinion, he uses them a little too much, but the idea of splitting the screen in interesting and dynamic ways to show multiple things at once is a good one.
        This video also brought up the popular DC musicians: the gogo bucket players! This made me laugh because it reminded me of last year when Mr. Bustillos told us about how he was currently learning to be a gogo bucket player. I can totally imagine Mr. Bustillos doing this.
         I also really like the other shots of just general DC prettiness. In this video, there are a lot of short little interviews with people about their favorite street musicians, which is an interesting component. The interviews with the musicians themselves are also really compelling. This whole video is just a snippet of what the film maker is creating, but already says so much about the street musicians, and answers peoples basic questions. The video even delves into the rivalries between the different musicians.
        I hope that our video can at least come close to answering as many questions as this video does, and is just as compelling. Watching this made me a lot more excited to get to work on our project!

Belated Thanksgiving Post

                  So, I had the idea over Thanksgiving Break that for my blog that week I would share a short, 30 second video of my Thanksgiving. But, as I was importing footage, I realized that we didn't have a blog post due that week. So I decided to post it now. I was going to make a 5x5, but then I got an adorable shot of my three year-old cousin singing a song she learned in school, and the shot was longer than 5 seconds. Instead it's just basically a video including a few things from my Thanksgiving. Here it is:

The shots:
-My three year old cousin Lucy singing "Turkey Dinner"
-Our turkey (it was 22lbs... I'm actually not sure if that means it was really big or average)
-Family at the table
-Another shot of everyone around the table
-Dessert!
-The candles... I was trying to be artsy but it didn't really work since I was shooting on my iphone

                    To me, Thanksgiving is really about spending time with family. Every year I can remember we've always gone to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving. This year, however, my aunt, uncle, and cousins were coming from Colorado so we decided to have Thanksgiving at our house. It was a little bigger than usual, but still really fun. I got to see a few of my dad's sibilings (he has seven) and their kids, as well as my cousin's grandma. It was a really relaxing break filled with ping pong, yahtzee, walks, and just hanging out. Unfortunately our next break isn't for three more weeks, but I'm counting down the days!
                   I'm going to try to get back to posting about once a week, and next week I'll probably write about our new documentary project, we're filming street musicians!