{"id":45,"date":"2025-09-04T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/?p=45"},"modified":"2025-09-05T03:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T03:10:21","slug":"blog-post-1-a-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 1: “A Move”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the introduction of his novel Doing Documentary Work, <\/em>Coles talks about working and studying in a changing world known as “the field”. He later goes on to say that it is almost like a responsibility or expectation as documentarians to be “apt to show that ambiguity of feeling to others”(Coles 13) through every intention while doing documentary work. As the world continues to become more and more polarized, nuanced, and unpredictable, it is important now more than ever to embrace ambiguity. How do we document the lives of others, tell their stories, and still leave it up to every viewer to interpret the story differently? What techniques can be used to leave space for interpretations to be changed and challenged as we and the whole world continue to change?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my second rewatch of the documentary, the relationship between the camera and the subjects being filmed and documented grabbed my attention. All of the up-close conversations felt extremely scripted and unnatural to me, yet personal. It felt like I was watching people act in a reality television show or a Hollywood blockbuster rather than an authentic look into the lives of ordinary people living their daily lives. Maybe this is intentional in order to protect the ambiguity within the field that Coles is articulating in his writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Example of a close-up conaversation
Elahe Esmaili, \u201cA Move\u201d, New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When documentarians put themselves in the field and film others, they are faced with almost an impossible task of sharing with an audience the experience of others and their surroundings, and not letting the subjectivity of their own experiences, implicit biases, emotions, etc, interfere with the stories of others they are trying to share. Consequently, focusing the camera close into a conversation might focus a viewer’s attention on the people being documented and prevent the documentarian’s own experience in the field from taking over the moment. On the other hand, I think this can have a negative consequence since it censors background context and focuses on the emotions of the subjects. While the intimacy of scenes like these helps the viewer feel like they are there in the moment and better understand how the people feel, I believe this leaves the societal issues and stigmas addressed in the film (both implicitly and explicitly) less open for interpretation and new ways of thinking.
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In the introduction of his novel Doing Documentary Work, Coles talks about working and studying in a changing world known as “the field”. He later goes on to say that it is almost like a responsibility or expectation as documentarians to be “apt to show that ambiguity of feeling to others”(Coles 13) through every intention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com231.hunterbraun.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}