amy essay Apply one filmmaker's theory of documentary film you have studied to your chosen documentary. How far does this increase your understanding of the film?

Amy essay

Apply one filmmaker's theory of documentary film you have studied to your chosen documentary. How far does this increase your understanding of the film?

In Asif Kapadia's documentary Amy, which is about the life of Amy Winehouse, Kapadia could be seen as a personal documentary filmmaker due to the many hours of archive footage he collected and edited to make the film. Kapadia shares some traits with the observational filmmaker, Kim Longinotto, where they both delve deep into the lives of their chosen projects by making the spectator feel a part of their life; both use voiceover to create a commentary on their chosen subjects; however, whilst Longinotto personally speaks in her documentary voiceover, Kapadia is silent. Therefore, there is more of a sense of distance created by Kapadia from his subject. Kapadia’s documentary speaks directly to the spectator through voiceovers of the people who were involved in the time of what was being shown. This gives more of a sense of realism rather than the filmmaker's voice-over opinion on it. This, therefore, influences the spectator to create there own new opinions on Amy and not what is just being shown. Kapadia wants the spectator to feel a certain way about Amy and does this through the archived footage he edited in certain ways. This included handheld camera footage and paparazzi footage. All of these micro features help the spectator to feel more involved with the documentary, as they create a feeling of intimacy with Amy’s ‘real’ life. Kapadia's main theme he wanted to express was that of what publicity can do to your life and what the corruption of fame does to people. 

At around the midpoint of Amy, there is a section where Amy's song Love is a Losing Game is played over a series of videos and pictures over her and Blake. The song and the images are manipulated by Kapadia as they are played as the spectator learns of the demise of their relationship and the negative, destructive effect that it had on Amy and her mental health. This section and this technique are particularly effective as Kapadia manipulates the way the spectator views Blake throughout the film, this section, in particular, portrays him as corrupt and manipulative shaping the way the spectator will continue to view Blake. Whereas Amy is shown to be more sweet and innocent compared to blake, perhaps suggested by the inclusion of the song weaved into the background of the images, it is one of her more honest and open songs and develops the idea that Blake was the negative counterpart in the relationship and was the main destructive influence on Amy. This could be seen as a further manipulation by Kapadia to give the spectator a bias against Blake as a figure, possibly diminishing the objective element of the documentary as the spectator learns more about her and her relationship with Blake. Compared to an observational filmmaker such as Kim Longinottto who has more of an objective approach. Because she is purely just observing and filming, also Longnitto spends less time editing than Kapadia. He searches for archived footage and goes through a long process of editing and cutting all the footage down into a 128-minute film. Kapadia's personal documentary-style makes Amy a more subjective film because he spends more time engineering his work. 

At the very end of the film, where Amy's death takes place, there is archived montage footage of the scene and Amy's dead body is in extreme longshot, creating an uneasy feeling that we are spying on her. The footage is outside her house with the ambulance outside alongside with the voiceover of Andrew Morris, her bodyguard. The first witness to her death, explaining how Amy told him the night before how much she hated being famous. Asif Kapadia assembled the footage and Morris’ voice to magnify how little privacy Amy actually had even on her death bed, she was filmed and photographed, showing no escape from paparazzi even after her death. Kapadia wanted the spectators to sympathise and empathise with Amy, to show her lack of control and abuse of drugs as a form of escapism from the shock of sudden fame, as well as a cry for help and a lack of hope. Kapadia style of personal documentary depicts Amy in a certain way, as spectators we are compelled to sympathise with Amy, through the interviews with Amy loved ones as well as compelling montages of Amy being her charismatic self, but we are also forced to see her at her worse. Therefore at the end of the film, we are left to our own devices of judgment on Amy Winehouse but we are encouraged to feel sorry for her due to Kapadia's personal documentary style. To compare Kapadia’s work with that of another filmmaker, Longinotto and her observational style, Kapadia’s film seems more subjective because he takes more time manipulating his work; more process has gone into influencing spectator response, making it more subjective and leaning favour towards Amy.

in conclusion, my understanding of film has increased because the comparison I made between Longinottos observational style showed how it differs from Kapadia's style in Amy and that allowed me to become more aware of the big spectrum of documentary film differs as a whole. As well as to evaluate to what extent can documentary can actually be objective rather than subjective, and how far Kapadia successfully illustrates Amy in a objective light. and how Kapadia illustrated to me how the editing processes differed to make a different ending result of the film.