'Street Art Documentary' Analysis

I thought for a bit of variety of the films I've looked at for this project I would find a film similar to the one we're making in terms of it being an amateur film and being a similar length to our restrictions. Street Art Documentary (2006) directed by James Ashbolt is 10 mins long and is a film by an amateur trying to convey the street art scene of Melbourne.

The people they follow at night to see how they do graffiti secretly

One of the main things it focusses on visually is the fact that the film-maker actually went out with some people and filmed them as they did some graffiti. There is multiple scenes of actual street artists doing work and it works very well within the film. This sadly is something we don't have tons of for our film and is something that if we were to go back to Liverpool we'd need to focus on getting more. In this film the camera follows them handheld and it feels very raw and honest, something we want in our doc and comes across well here.

One of the bits of footage of an artist doing his stencil work

One criticism is that there aren't many city shots within the film and since in the Vimeo description it describes it as being 'about the Melbourne street art scene' it feels at time it lacks a sense of place. Some of the sound levels seem a bit off too, sometimes the backing music overshadows what the person on screen is saying. Furthermore in one of the interviews a lot of the background noise gets picked up so it's not the easiest thing to hear.

Quite a strange profile interview set up, shows the workshop surroundings very well though

What's very nice about the piece is that it talks to a wide array of people, some young, some older and interestingly a chiropractor who does street art in his spare time reflects on how his patients view it and how other street artists view him knowing what he is. It makes for an interesting story and shows a side I haven't seen touched on before.

The hidden identity interview approach of this film

It's nice seeing that the aspects from the professional films are replicated in this amateur film too, it shows there is quite an established way of making these films. It's also quite nice that our rough cut was similar in many ways to all these films but yet different at the same point, we use a lot of things like split screen that I haven't seen anywhere else.

My notes watching the film.