Most recent public comments by Rich Koos https://nowcomment.com/users/19129 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525298 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525298 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:53:52 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525297 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525297 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:52:29 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525296 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525296 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:50:40 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525295 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525295 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:49:54 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525294 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525294 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:48:57 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525292 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43762?scroll_to=525292 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:47:56 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525291 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525291 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:46:40 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525289 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525289 Fri, 20 May 2016 22:13:46 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525288 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525288 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:44:45 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525286 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525286 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:43:49 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525285 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525285 Fri, 20 May 2016 10:41:29 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525284 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525284 Starting in medias res is not really a staple of documentary. That technique usually reserves itself for action or thriller type movies. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:40:28 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525283 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525283 Song is a great tool to use in times of struggle. Mostly all cultures develop some sort of singing or music when times are tough. But most importantly people also do this in times of serenity. Strange how musical people are instinctively. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:38:40 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525282 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525282 Tempo can have everything and nothing to do with the feeling of a song. Sometimes it's best to stick with if it's a major or minor key, which usually is telling of the mood being happy or sad respectively. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:36:53 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525280 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525280 Realistic and environmental sounds can be misconstrued because what is realistic isn't always what sound is occurring at the moment. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:35:39 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525279 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525279 And intention is what shapes all films even if the director does not know it. Fri, 20 May 2016 12:38:07 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525275 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525275 Comradery is quite common in times of war Fri, 20 May 2016 10:31:51 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525273 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525273 It is kind of communist in that regard don't you think? Fri, 20 May 2016 10:31:15 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525271 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525271 Heroism usually likes to focus on an individual so I'm not sure if it is the right word here. I'm blanking on the word for heroism but as a nation or people though. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:30:09 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525270 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525270 Getting historical context is one thing, but actually living through it is another. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:28:41 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525269 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43792?scroll_to=525269 But not always as reliable as the commentary from the people who it actually affected. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:27:54 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525267 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525267 I'm not sure, aesthetics are such a strange thing to evaluate because you know what looks good when you see it. It might boil down to evenness in a frame, good use of 1/3s, and nice landscape shots. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:25:49 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525266 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525266 Because it was such a new experience for them at the time, they have never seen a story like this anywhere. And even a little bit of it is enticing to see. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:23:44 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525265 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525265 The viewers walk away with a condensed view of Nanook and his family. Not necessarily the whole truth but one side of the truth. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:22:16 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525264 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525264 Well anyone who doesn't choose a word to define them might have natural opposition to the word. Though I don't think they would know what it means if it were said in front of them. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:20:38 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525263 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525263 Well, it is set in Canada, so maybe Quebecers? Fri, 20 May 2016 12:46:50 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525262 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525262 It's like the syntax of film. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:16:48 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525261 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=525261 Which is sad because you would think that the director would have full control of their film. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:16:08 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525260 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525260 I am still don't understand this response Fri, 20 May 2016 10:12:50 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525258 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525258 I meant more on the side of the british experience and patriotism for the british people. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:11:20 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525254 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525254 Propaganda is a part of history, but it has gotten a bad rap. Propaganda used to just mean marketing and advertising, but because of war and dictators, it has been used as a tool to brainwash and control people. Which can still be said about advertising. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:10:23 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525251 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525251 I've heard in the case of blog posts and digital marketing that people only read 20% of a page if there is just text, but retain 65% of the content three days if a picture is attached. So I'd say visuals have a lot to do with how we retain and absorb information. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:08:10 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525248 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525248 Hopefully it is relying on real life and her skills as a documentarian to capture amazing natural scenes. But I'm sure there is a great deal of editing that also shapes the story. Both, are important, and they reinforce each other. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:04:52 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525246 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525246 I feel like this is exemplative of all film and documentary. In the eyes of the observer isn't always the eye that you want/need to see. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:02:08 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525244 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525244 It's kind of like a group adrenaline rush, there have been other examples of people banding together and living their lives, but these seems different in some way. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:00:52 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525241 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=525241 Very true, but in that specific case it seems unrealistic that the people would act in this way. Though stranger things have happened in history. Sat, 21 May 2016 06:59:04 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505254 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505254 The difference between these two films and their two ideologies they represent is pretty obvious. The answer is kind of intangible but I think it boils down to spirit and perspective. Triumph is supposed to detail the struggle of the German people but it ends up being a puff piece for the already unstoppable German army. It kind of fantasizes the German people and Hitler as if they are already gods. On the other hand we have the British. This film is much more about the climb of the collective people. Britain knew it was struggling at this point, the Germans had them out maned and had more tanks and planes, but somehow they held them off. This film expreses a great sense of spirit and comradery, you can feel the passion of the people. It's really just about glorifying Germany for triumph. Sat, 02 Apr 2016 08:03:41 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505247 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505247 This time capsule contains a very one sided representation of how the war went. Though it has clips from the German side, it predominantly focuses on the British struggle and how they had more spirit than the Germans. And that is why they won the battle. This film does not bother to explain the German experience or why they are fighting but only serves as a focused look on British nationalism. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:11:20 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505244 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505244 In this case I think she would say a narrator is unnecessary in telling the story. She would rely more on real life tell the story and the events and sounds of everything that happens tell the story, rather than to a narrator come in and narate to the viewer. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:04:52 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505239 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43791?scroll_to=505239 Realism is a term that is hard to define because we all have a concept of what's real, but certain events like these make an observer feel as if it's not real. The fact that people just went on with their daily lives after such a terrible night of war is crazy to the observer. The observer feels that there should be a collective remeberence or appreciation for what they went through as a way to ease all of that tension and violence. I think I agree with the observer in that it is odd that everything just went back to normal. Sat, 21 May 2016 06:59:04 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474556 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474556 Flaherty was obviously no amateur, he had a very expensive camera and presumably a crew of some sort with him so he knew how to set up a shot. Aesthetics are a weird thing because it is very subjective, but it is basically, does the shot look good or bad. In the documentary there are several scenes where everything just looks good, the scene with the baby and dogs in front of the pelts, where they get off the boat in the introduction, and when they are walking on the mountains to the trading post. All of these scenes look great, you will not say "oh I wish it was more centered, or that lighting is bad. Everything looks good at a glance to the human eye. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:25:49 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474551 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474551 Either way it would have been presented would have been altered because of his view and editing. If he would have studied Nanook and then shot the documentary he would have manipulated the shots just as much because sometimes you just cannot get the shots you need without some sort of direction. Sometimes life does not happen the way you predict. So it does not matter if he manipulated certain scenes because film makers do this without knowing sometimes and have to be criticized for what could have been or what isn't. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:23:44 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474549 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474549 I believe that someone is called a noble savage or a savage for that matter when someone does not understand or want to understand their lifestyle. So would I consider Nanook a noble savage? No because the film gives us an insight into Nanook's life and family which greatly humanizes him. Is he a dirty savage from the north who eats poop and does other barbaric things? No, he's a pretty much ordinary Alaskan living in a barren wasteland in which he thrives. To truly make him a noble savage I think the documentary must have been through a "Nat Geo" type of lens where everything is from the outside and they never really get into the life of the family or Nanook. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:20:38 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474547 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474547 Is the "grammar" of a film the "syntax" or the ordering of shots to make a documentary believable or is it the editing of shots to make a more cohesive "sentence" or film? I don't know that I fully understand this analogy. Fri, 20 May 2016 10:16:48 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474546 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43758?scroll_to=474546 The film presents the characters not as a struggling alaskan family that is roughing it, but as a thriving culture of people that are happy with their environment and know how to get the most from it. They also do not look unhealthy or near death, Nanook and his family are usually either calm or smiling in almost every shot shown to us. In the scene where we see an almost naked baby playing with the puppies, you would think that the baby would be close to death wearing nothing in such a cold environment. But the baby is already used to the cold and used to their environment from birth. Which gives us a nice portrait of the generations of family that have survived in the cold. Fri, 20 May 2016 12:46:50 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457243 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457243 Lots of their breakthroughs may have been on accident or intentional but what we know for sure is that they knew how to put together a shot. Their aesthetics for a scene and their timing really skyrocketed them into fame and notoriety. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 08:41:28 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457240 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457240 Some of their films are just very boring, it is in their nature. Seeing workers get off their shift in workmen clothes and then seeing them do the same in nice clothes is not very entertaining. Mainly because we are used to narratives and big explosions but some of their films are fascinating. Like the New York films where a hundred years ago there were horse and buggies still in the city. That is crazy to me to see how much has changed in such a small amount of time, NYC is unrecognizable. We owe a lot of respect to the Lumiere Brothers because they brought film making to another level. They took something that was very new and scary to a lot of people and turned it into something that could be shown to a whole room of people. And even though it was so new to them, they were able to develop techniques that are still used today. Rule of thirds is a big part of their films to make each shot look dynamic. They also used a lot of diagonals to also make the shots more interesting. Without some of these innovations film would be very different or nonexistent. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 08:33:05 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457232 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457232 Everyone who has ever taken a decent photo or shot a great video has had timing to thank. Though some of their stuff seems a little staged, the fact that they were there and rolling at the same time are some crazy odds. If they weren't trying to capture as much as they could with such a new device we might not have film as we know it today. They felt a need to document their everyday life experiences. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 08:24:50 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457227 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457227 In my head I am imagining a supercut of every speaker saying like one word to convey a whole sentence like the edited Obama scenes to make him sing "Hotline Bling." But I don't think that this is dishonest if the scenes were played in full in the documentary. If they are not played in full later and the speakers are manipulated into saying something that they did say, then that is dishonest. You can edit someone to say anything if you have enough footage, and it would be dishonest to show the audience that. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 08:07:16 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457224 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457224 If the objective of a movie or documentary is to evoke some sort of emotion then of course the result of more advances in the industry will also demand an increase in morality and aesthetics. Cinematographers and actors have pretty much one job, make a scene look pretty and be pretty respectively. There is also a high demand to shock and awe the audience with questionable types of film that either have excessive violence, realism, or nudity. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 07:59:13 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457221 https://nowcomment.com/documents/43736?scroll_to=457221 Montages can create all sorts of meaning depending on how they are put together, speed of cuts, type of music used if any, etc. But more importantly montages are used for very specific reasons. 1) To advance a story/idea quicker, or faster than it would be to show the scenes individually at full length. 2) Used as an overview of a certain area/idea. Having a montage of a scene in Europe would tell the audience that they are in Europe. 3) To make the audience feel some type of emotion. A quick and effective way of making the audience feel sad or angry very quickly can ramp up a serious documentary. Fri, 05 Feb 2016 07:52:56 -0500