Week 9 • Visual Evidence
To Do This Week
- Read: “Visual Evidence” by Barry Hampe (PDF).
- Continue work on your Montage Project due Week 10.
Montage Follow-up
- contrast rural/urban shift: 4:40
- Man's feet & shadows: 6:50
- Sister 1 feet and steps: 19:25
- Sister 1 hungry on bench: 29:32
- Sister 2 feet on mud: 33:46
- Street mugging/opening murder: 36:09
In Class
- Discussion: What is “visual evidence”? How do filmmakers support arguments, feelings, and experiences through the camera?
- Examples: Documentary clips demonstrating interviews, B-roll, and image/sound montage as forms of proof.
- Screening: The Devil’s Playground (2002) — observe how visual evidence is used to narrate real human struggles and rites of passage.
Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA (1976) is a landmark of American documentary filmmaking that immerses viewers in the 1973 Brookside coal miners’ strike in Kentucky. Blending cinéma vérité and interview.
Foundational Documentaries with strong Visual Evidence
- Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922) — Early ethnographic “evidence” complicated by staged scenes.
- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) — Holocaust Testimony without archival footage as an ethical stance on proof. The film’s “visual evidence” comes from faces, voices, gestures, and landscapes.
- Salesman (Albert & David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, 1969) — A landmark in Direct Cinema, observing Bible salesmen on the road as they navigate faith, persuasion, and the uneasy boundary between documentation and performance.
- The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988) — Reenactments and interviews reframe legal “truth.”
- Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976) — Cinéma vérité as participatory evidence of labor struggle.
Profile Project (25%)
This project asks you to produce a short (1–2 minute) documentary-style profile of a person engaged in an interesting job, craft, or hobby. Your goal is to tell a visual story about how they work, what drives them, and how their activity connects to larger questions about work and creativity.
Choose a subject who performs visible, hands-on activity—someone who does more than sit in front of a computer. Possibilities include artists, gardeners, athletes, builders, cooks, or craftspersons.
Process
- Pre-Interview: Have a conversation with your subject to learn about their job or hobby. Gather background information, routines, and motivations.
- Planning: Prepare a short story outline, interview questions, and a shot list that identifies key moments of “visual evidence” to capture.
- Interview: Conduct a sit-down interview in a well-lit, quiet location. Focus on clear audio and eye-line composition.
- Action Footage: Follow your subject as they work or create something. Capture a variety of shots (wide, medium, close-up) that reveal process and personality. Continue to ask questions while filming—sometimes the best answers come spontaneously.
Focus Areas
- Camera Movement: Move with your subject; think dynamically about perspective and rhythm.
- Interview Technique: Draw out personality and insight through thoughtful questioning.
- Craft: Pay attention to framing, lighting, sound quality, and continuity editing or montage.
Deliverables
- Rough Cut (10%) DUE: Oct 31: A complete structure with temporary sound and titles.
- Final Cut (15%) DUE: Nov 7: A polished edit with refined pacing, sound mix, and coherent narrative structure.
Include opening titles and end credits. You may add music to enhance tone and emotion. Creativity and technical execution are equally important.
Student Profile Projects:
Devil's Playground
Take notes on the visual evidence in the documentary Devil's Playground. What scenes stand out for you? How does the visual evidence help narrate the stories about the main subjects?
Notes
Key Idea: Documentary filmmaking is a practice of finding visual proof—images that *show* rather than *tell*. The camera becomes a witness, not just a recorder.
- Think about how “visual evidence” is constructed through framing, editing, and juxtaposition.
- Hampe reminds us that B-roll is not filler—it is the connective tissue of meaning.
- Observe how different kinds of shots (close-ups, interviews, environmental context) form visual arguments.
- Bring your observations from The Devil’s Playground into next week’s discussion on montage.