Amy documentary holiday tasks

 Second hand footage - fly on the wall filmmaking. 

Filmmakers theory on documentary - Broomfield vs Longinotto 

RECORDING BACK TO BLACK:

Switches from diegetic to non-diegetic and back sound to emphasise the importance of the Back to black album. Uses footage to show Amy has an awareness of how sad the song is - also uses VoiceOver to show that despite the potential tumultuous attitude Amy has she is still fairly professional able to work cohesively and with a purpose. 

WINNING THE AWARD:

Showing a mixture of footage of her winning the award and performing on stage and contrasting it with Juliette's interview in which Amy had said "This is so boring without drugs" both highlights and understanding of how deeply her addiction affects Amy and also plays with diegetic and non-diegetic sound to give us a sense of how contrasting the reality is from what's being played out on camera. 

AMY'S FUNERAL:

This sequence shows raw footage - at first with her friend and bodyguard explaining how he found her body and then showing the raw pain of people at the funeral, the fact that the tabloids still captured the most intimate of Amy's loved ones moments shows how gut-wrenchingly ruthless they were and the cinematography being shaky and hand held shows that it's wrong that this was captured on film. This makes the audience distinctly uncomfortable as we feel we're intruding on a private moment - and we are. 

Observational – Kim Longinotto 

 

o                Working with a team

o                Not telling people what to do

o                Detach herself from the emotions

o               Final product – “ownership” – their story

o               Moral and ethical intent

kbKapadia certainly absorbed Longinotto's methods of observational documentary. The idea of providing people with as much time and space to expand on their own stories relates to Longinotto's moral and ethical intent, instead of instructing how recordings and filming should occur, Kapadia let conversation flow freely; additionally detaching from his own emotions in order to avoid disrupting the rawness of the  person being interviewed. Kapadia would rather a trigger a conversation with a few words. Regarding Amy, all of this was taken into account, Kapadia is not heard once throughout the entirety of the documentary, strictly following the "fly on the wall" technique, similarly to Longinotto. 

bkIn contrast, Broomfield's mode of documentary does not relate to how Kapadia produced Amy. Broomfield commonly uses participatory techniques, being seen on camera, the opposite to Amy. Furthermore, Broomfield steers the outcome to a particular conversation, perhaps removing the authenticity of a story. Kapadia allows free flow conversation, without interrupting.