For the second week of our class, we needed to analyze any sequence from our favorite documentary movie. Honestly, the hardest part for me was to choose a movie. After long thoughts, I remembered about the movie I watched not long ago which really impressed me.
“The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” is a 2011 documentary film about the public housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, first occupied in 1954. During 1960’s the complex became infamous for its high crime rates, poverty, dangerous living conditions, to name a few. In 1970’s the buildings were demolished by the U.S. government, thus making the project one of the most worldwide famous cases of failed public housing project.
Aside from archival materials, such as news reports, black and white photographs, moving images, the movie also includes interviews with former residents of the complex and experts, such as sociologist and urban historian. It tries to reveal the hidden conditions and reasons of project’s failure. The interviewees seem rather open to speak up about their connections and traumas related to the place, which evokes rather contradictory associations and memories for them- both bad and good ones. Thus, this movie can also be considered as a historical-sociological research represented visually. Maybe the obvious good research also greatly influenced my decision to chose this film.
I edited the sequence from 32:40 to 36:56 following the analysis based on table scheme suggested by M. Rabiger. Finding the "perfect" part to analyse was not easy for me, either. I made notes with several sequences which I highly liked and which I thought might be interesting for the analysis. However, some sequences were not easy to analyse when separated from previous or next ones. After some struggle a while I could finally come up with a decision.
I chose that sequence in particular because it showed an interesting thematic concept of a story, which is the control. The interviewees compare the building complex with a prison because of its numerous restrictions and punitive rules. The archival materials, combined with those interviews, create the full image of an area under control. For instance, the archival photo of a policeman in a building (35:57), combined with the voice-over of an interviewee, creates the association of a prison. Moreover, the background low sound, which is almost always prevalent, creates the mysticism about the case. The sound is not high, but it is always there. The audience might even not notice it when watching the sequence, but it creates the overall atmosphere of mystical danger. In some parts, the sound gets intense, when, for instance, a woman talks about morality (36:40), which creates the feeling of tension and oppression. On the other parts, such as the end of the sequence, the sound drastically stops. Moreover, it stops simultaneously when the screen gets blank. This part seems to emphasize the peak of the tension.
The zoom-in technique when applied to the archival photos gives the impression of a deeper meaning and thorough insight to the narrative. The slow speech of interviewees with background sounds gives space and time for the audience to think and “digest” what they just listened and watched. Also, arranging both expert interviews and former residents’ interviews in one sequence should be emphasized since it helps to tell the story here from different positionalities. By this, the sequence has more dimensions. If it included only those interviews of former residents, and the other sequence included only expert interviews, it would be entirely different. Hence, it is important to see how the same thematic concept (“control” in this case) is interpreted from different views and “angles”.
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