How does "Off the Mic" represent social groups/issues?
The primary group our piece represented is 'poets'. One of our primary purposes in making the documentary was to create a more complex view of poets away from the traditional stereotypical view of what a spoken word poet is. We wanted to show that poetry doesn't have to be overly academic, or pretentious. Additionally, we also wanted to go against the perspective that poetry is scoldy and wanted to show that though a primary purpose of a lot of slam poetry is advocacy, it also brings a lot of benefits to the social development of spoken word poets.
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| Interviewee Aneenaa discusses how becoming a poet made her more sure in expressing and communicating her ideas in all aspects of life. |
Off the Mic, also represents the pursuing of Creative Writing and English as a genuine and viable career choice. By representing the pursuing of one of the main protagonists of the subject in University, the documentary looks at public perceptions of pursuing this career. As the interviewee discusses how many say that because many say they are pursuing English they won't be able to achieve anything with their career, the interviewee breaks these expectations and encourages viewers to pursue what they truly want to pursue. The interviewee goes onto discuss the many door creative writing and poetry has already opened for them, setting an example to viewers for how art can drive your life forward.
How does "Off the Mic" engage with audiences
Background music and usage of b-roll are two of the big tools used to engage with audiences in this project. These factors, along with carefully chosen primary interviews guide audiences along an emotionally powerful and in the end rewarding journey.
First, we carefully use sound to manage the tone and mood of the piece. The piece purposefully starts with the sounds of poetry, passionate performances, showcasing how much spoken word poetry means to people, and how real this connection to poetry is. Background music is then introduced to add a hopeful and inspiring tone to everything that is said.
Second, the usage of b-roll in Off the Mic adds to what the interviewees are saying, without taking anything away. For instance as Shiro is discussing their nerves performing for the first time at an Open Mic, b-roll supplements this with footage of them at an open mic.
How did research inform "Off the Mic" and the way it uses or challenges conventions?
Our research was essential in creating a final product we were very proud of. It was especially great to get a taste of a variety of different approaches to documentary film-making. Understanding the different directions we could take our documentary, made me hyper-aware of where we should take our documentary. The previous research, essentially removed a lot of the trial and error usually needed to create a good final product, as they gave me a great understanding of genre conventions.
Part of our goals, was to showcase our love for the craft of spoken word poetry, in the same ways Exit through the gift shop exuded a deep adoration for street art. The specific part we gathered inspiration from, was the beginning of the film. Breaking genre conventions, the film starts with an out of context montage of street artists in the middle of their craft. What I loved about this beginning montage, was how it showed so much about street art, the effort, the risk, and the love that goes into making it, without overtly saying it.
In order to emulate a similar feeling, we decided to start of our documentary with montages of spoken word poetry. We wanted to use, similarly to Exit through the gift shop, authentic archival footage. However, one problem we ran into was that many of these clips were poorly shot, some even in portrait. Still, we felt it was essential to maintain this raw natural feeling. Therefore, we made a stylistic choice, and for the opening montage set the aspect ratio to a square in a rounded box. As a result, the documentary kind of has the effect where as you get through it, and go from a tighter to more open aspect ratio after the montage, you are getting 'closer' both physically and metaphorically to understanding spoken word poetry.
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| Intro montage to "Off the Mic" |
This urge to play around with breaking genre conventions was also definately inspired by many of the New York Op Docs we researched, which broke genre conventions in very stark ways and created cool effects. Watching these films showed us that breaking with convention when done correctly could lead to an awesome effect.
One area where we did stick with conventions, was our interviews. From the films we saw, we found that experimentation with breaking of the norms of interviews, such as was done in "Counter Conformity", a student filmed we watched, did not create results we found impressive. We often found that when interview conventions were broken, it was more for the gimmick of doing something different than having a clear goal in mind. As a result, especially to contrast with other aspects of our film that did break conventions, we kept our interviews fairly standard. Well-lit, interviewees placed on thirds, speaking slightly off camera. We found the results from this interview setup more than satisfactory and felt in the end that not experimenting with this particular part of the production was a great choice.