Today we watched the last group's film. I really liked their documentary, about a domestic helper's dream in Hong Kong. I thought the quality of the film and especially the sound was very good compared to the others because there wasn't a lot of wind noise and it was balanced quite well. While watching the film I noticed they only interviewed one helper, and kept going back between that helper and the mom, showing both sides of the story and both opinions. I originally thought they could have interviewed more helpers, as their topic was about domestic helpers so they could have a gotten a range of interviews to get more information and thoughts from that side of the story. But I think in this case it was okay that only one helper was interviewed because the switching back and forth between the mom and helper, the way the footage was cut that way created really nice tension between the two. That pieced the film together and sort of weaved it along, because we can tell there's a whole other side to the story that someone is probably not telling the viewer directly, but that we can assume and guess.
The rest of the class was spent watching the movie Billy Elliot. The movie was directed by Stephen Daldry. It was later adapted into a musical and opened on Broadway in 2008. It was set during the 1984-1985 miners' strike which happened in the UK. The reason being that coal had been nationalized, and although some mines remained profitable, many mines ended up being shut down, resulting in tens of thousands of job losses. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called for a national strike. It greatly affected the coal industry in the UK at the time. This is the background for the movie. Billy is a young boy who loves to dance. Billy's dad and older brother Tony are both on strike, no money is coming in, so Billy's dad is very upset that he's wasting his money sending him to learn boxing while Billy is off somewhere else dancing.
While watching we had to pay attention to the sound design of the film. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the specifics because usually when you watch a movie you don't really pay attention to the sound. It comes very naturally and you expect it to be there; it plays a huge role in creating and stimulating emotions but you don't realize that. I have to focus and really try to notice the change in sound and the tone of the music. Sometimes it's easy to pick out the details such as the contrast between the music of the ballet and the noise from outside (workers on strike, protesting), which shows the two complete opposite worlds. One of childhood innocence, and the other of this hard-core reality. There was also the scene where Billy's dad is confronting Billy about the dancing. While this was happening there was no music, just the sound of their voices. This was to instill the sense of tension between the two people, especially with the invalid grandma sitting almost in the middle of them. But as soon as they get up from the table, the music starts and you notice the strong bass in the music to show the anger that's being let out and the frustration in the two people. I like the movie, but there's a lot of profanity and sometimes the accents make it really hard to understand!
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