Short Documentary Blog Post

For this blog, I decided to watch the True Life Documentary called "Resist the Power: Saudi Arabia".

Narrative

I found that this documentary had a very interesting narrative that would really appeal to a Western audience, for it shows four people or groups of people who are very similar to the normal middle class American teenager that cannot do the same very basic, almost rudimentary things that American teenagers know are commonplace and generally accepted for themselves. This documentary tailors itself to its younger audience by showing the oppression in Saudi Arabia by showing the actions young Americans take for granted being banned in Saudi Arabia, each of the four stories in the documentary showing struggles varying in importance to the general society and with varying levels of success in resistance, but all held together by the common thread of youth empowerment in any situation, indicative of the overarching issues in Saudi Arabia despite the levity of the issue at hand. The issue of a young man, Aziz, searching for a girlfriend to meet up with from Facebook seems really light, not important to the grand scheme of things, but the documentary shows how even his small resistance is important, for the narrative focuses much on the world around Aziz and the other subjects that are affecting his actions, surprising to the Western audience, like how young men can't go into the mall without their family being their with them, preventing Aziz from meeting up with a girl.

Some issues are shown to be more important in the "grand scale," like the work of Ahmed trying to get women to be able to be a part of city meetings and giving back to the poor people in Jeddah.

Of course, it is not like we get more emphasis on this aspect in the narrative because the narrative emphasizes all of the different stories, not just focusing on one, trying to create a more balanced issue, focusing on the important as well as the not so important according to general ideas.

The narrative usually involves switching between all four stories, basically switching 2 or 3 times for the beginning, middle and end of each story, to keep them matching to make a flowing story between the 4 stories. There is a lot of narration with characters doing some simple actions that does not distract much, combined with dialogue. The narrative ends very hopefully.

The narrative is lead by each of the characters for their own story, only with an overarching narrator to introduce the situation at the begining; its kind of weird not to have the narrator finish the story off, but it works for the set-up of the narrative itself, ending on the voice of each of the youth on their own, a vestige of their power, an important part of the theme of empowerment throughout.

Camera Work

The camera work can be shaky at times, when they are in a situation like a dialogue or something, like when Aziz is talking to the guard or when the band, Breeze of the Dying, is getting kicked out of the concert in Bahrain.

Much of the rest of the time, the shots are relatively fluid, with shots of what the characters do in their lives, like a slightly less planned movie, only slightly shaky, but only at times. A lot of the hopeful ideas, especially at the end, are developed by showing the characters walking towards a symbolic statue, like bicycle that Fatima walks by while talking about her plans for the future.You only really see talking heads at the beginning, in order to establish the characters and their voices and their conflicts.

Editing/Sound Design

Like I said before, the stories are intercut between each other at about three or so points, edited in order to keep the stories and the entire piece flowing. The editing intercuts dialogue, talking heads and narrative while seeing the actions of the characters that correspond to the narration/story, keeping the story interesting and the viewer involved because of the changing situations of speaking and action. I liked the sequence where we see Fatima narrating and then talking the store owner; the type of action is varied between us watching what she is doing while narrating and an actual dialogue that affects her efforts in her part of the documentary.

The sound design focuses much on the stereotypical Arabian music, but it works for the piece because it keeps it throughout, and kind of even works in its contrast to the metal band's music, showing just how much they are going against the norms of their region. Also, the music is a bit more adapted to the youthful vibe of the documentary, with some western influence, and is constant throughout, all of the music matching the rest throughout the rest of the piece. Sometimes its varies a bit with some dissonant music.