Analysis of an Observational Documentary

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The observational documentary that I have decided to analyse is episode one of 'The Imagineering Story' on Disney Plus. I chose this documentary as Disney is a particular passion of mine and it's a subject that I am interested to find out more about.

The documentary begins with very positive music that is rather uplifting and has fast pace to it. This instantly creates a happy tone to the documentary without any information being revealed yet. This is accompanied by some GV footage of different creative materials such as fabrics and mood boards that just add that creative feel to the film; this instantly drew me in to carry on watching as it felt up lifting. A narration with a happy tone then begins and outlines what the documentary will entail. The use of music really made me feel positive, even throughout the whole documentary by using just a simple uplifting instrumental it made me view it in a positive mood and had a very successful impact on the emotions on me as the audience. This got me really interested in how music can affect how we view something and I began to read up on it and when researching after watching it I found that "Stanford and Oxford University amongst many others have linked human emotion to music . Because of this it is crucial for a filmmaker to utilise music in order to help carry the emotional tone that they may not get from the visuals alone." I found this extremely interesting and from the documentary had first hand experience on what effect music can have on the audience and how it can adjust their emotions towards what they are viewing. This inspired me to want to do this in our documentary. Even though it is focussed on quite a negative subject we wanted to bring out the positives and after watching 'Imagineering' it influenced my thoughts on adding music to our film to try to bring out the positive aspects just through some music in the background of narration. Below is the trailer for the documentary where a similar music is present:


Imagineering Trailer, 2019


The next thing that the documentary did that I found interesting and that stood out to me was the use of archived footage. This is a typical documentary convention and can truly represent or evidence a point that the documentary is trying to make. It is also interesting to portray how times have changed within the last fifty years and  this will stand out particularly to any fans of the subject. Not only do they use archived footage but also archived audio footage which is extremely powerful and moving. Although COVID-19 is a new issue and there is not much in terms of archived footage that is available for us to use, I still take inspiration for the way that it is edited into the documentary. For example the narrative or an interviewee will mention something in relation to a long time ago and as they will speaking it will cut to the archived footage. I really enjoy this as an audience members as it really helps to shape the interview and help it feel as it flows rather than quite static, therefore this is something that I would like to use in our documentary, as we already do have a lot of B-roll related to COVID-19 we could use this to cut to during interviews to help them flow and frame the whole picture for our audience.

Screenshot taken from Imagineering Episode One

Something else that really interests me about watching this is the use of colour. All scenes are very bright and have an exciting colour palette; whether it is showing crafting materials or costumes everything is colourful and this builds on the positive feel that the programme creates. The colour choices add a motiving aesthetic to 'Imagineering' and this is something that I would love to use in our documentary. This may be through making sure interviews are well lit and interviewers wearing clothes that are bright in colour, or through the poem section and asking our contributors to wear bright clothing just to again reinforce that positive feel that I have been inspired to capture. We also have plenty of B-roll of rainbows that have been created by community members and cutaways of these could be included just as the colourful cutaways in 'Imagineering' are executed.


Screenshot taken from Imagineering Episode One

 Another aspect of the documentary that I really enjoy is the contrast that it has within itself. There is a mixture between very formal looking still interviews with shaky handheld shots. There is a particular moment when there is an interview that is very well lit and appears extremely professional, but then we see a shot of the sign for a ride that is hand held and shaky. In my opinion that was a very successful moment in making the documentary feel more real as the interview became a little performative but then we were taken back to the world of the documentary with the cutaway shot. Even though we will not be able to get to the standard of the interview setups in this documentary due to lockdown and not being able to use kit or choose an appropriate location, that does not mean that once lockdown is over I can practice getting shots like this, but for now we can try for interviews to get them as professional looking as possible to try and create a similar effect. In terms of the hand held shots we have many of these so we can try and create a similar effect with the cutaway shots as they do in 'Imagineering'.

Screenshot taken from Imagineering Episode One

 In conclusion 'Imagineering' has inspired me to try to create many of the effects that I have seen to create a similar impact on the audience to what I experienced. The biggest impact it has had on me is definitely the music as this is present the whole way through and left that positive and happy feel with me throughout it and afterwards therefore I would like to have something similar in our documentary as we want it to be powerful and different and make our audience feel positive and have hope for the future.

Bibliography:

Imagineering, Episode One [television programme online] Iwerks. Disney Plus (2020) 65 mins At: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/a250e541-a085-4b1f-aced-631a2cf88501 (Accessed on 01.05.2020)

Imagineering, Trailer [television trailer online] Iwerks. Disney Plus (2020) 2 mins At:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7TlaXDPrg(Accessed on 01.05.2020)

Paul, J. (2016) 'Things to Remember When Picking Music For A Documentary Film' In: The Beat 18.05.2016 [online] At: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-pick-music-for-documentary-film/ (Accessed on 01.05.2020)

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