Visual evidence is a key piece to any sort of documentary styled film or short. I view documentaries and non-fiction shows or videos as almost a visual compilation of just straight evidence to explain a concept, story, or idea. It’s also very important for fictional works but its required for anything non-fiction like The Devils Playground. In the devils playground the concept of amish life is explained din great detail and focuses heavy on the life of the teenage amish and how the complete loss of religious structure will send young amish teens spiraling and possibly bonding amish life as a whole.
This concept is conveyed through a mass amount of visual evidence. For the conveying of how amish life works and how limited the amenities of the amish are we see a lot of shots of the clothing, the wagons and horses, the farming, house hold objects, and one thing that really caught my eye, the use of oil lamps. The oil lamps were never commented on but it just adds to simple nature and technologically restrictive life the amish live.
The visual evidence in this documentary was very compelling and effective. Everything shown is such stark contrast to the life we live that it pushed this story much farther than just briefly explaining the amish way of life and then focusing on the fallout of amish teenagers. It’s like it set a strict boundary and example of how the kids should be acting vs how they are actually acting.