The Reflexive Mode - Doc Mode Activity 2

(Ben, I will email you the password to the video. It has been requested to be kept private.)

The reflexive mode of documentary offers a unique challenge to both filmmaker and audience. It allows  the filmmaker to address contrivance outright and perhaps give a more honest representation of reality. By this I mean that one who admits deceit is more honest than one who denies it or avoids the conversation entirely. The audience is then proffered with the task of discerning what is revealed illusion or simple contrivance due to the lack of illusion. In my film I chose a subject who wanted to create a film with me, one who agreed to play an active part in shaping it and agreeing to be filmed as the subject during the shaping process.

I discovered that making a film in this manner creates potential for great fidelity and simultaneous censorship, it is as Barnouw puts it, "a reckless notion". Though the filming process is rich with actuality, the editing process becomes the invisible  barrier of true and honest delivery of reality. It is therefore important, as Vertov exemplified in Man With A Movie Camera to address and present this portion of the filmmaking process. With the inclusion of this aspect of my film, the film becomes more about itself than anything else, in spite of the amount of self induced or otherwise needed censorship and revision. The result is as Barnouw states "a heightened awareness" by dissolving illusion.

In the case of this film, the subject became increasingly offended with the material being produced of us making the film. Though the film was initiated as making a film about making a film of the subject. With time the subject disliked the informal nature that the film took on as it grew increasingly reflexive. This in turn, through many revisions and layers of filming, and filming the reactions to what was filmed, created a highly sensored self-aware film. The film could no longer truly be about the subject, only the film itself. The film is far more self-aware than it would allow itself to be shown. A strange experience of reflexivity.