Major Project - Documentary Research - Flights and Flights
Flights and Flights
We
live in an era, when travelling places is taken for granted. Not only cars,
even planes are nowadays seen as pretty cheap if not the cheapest way to reach
a certain destination. But what does it actually take or what is taken away by
low cost airlines in order to offer a reasonable transport alternative for
working class people? To find out more about this interesting topic and also to
satisfy my travelling soul I decided to watch and review Flights and Fights – Inside The Low Cost Airline documentary.
You
can immediately sense that the primary purpose of this documentary was to show the
day to day life of those included in low cost travelling (employees, owners and
passengers) as it is, the main focus of the producers was therefore a well told
story, glamor and excessive production expenses were being avoided for the
majority of the film. Its structure consists of two main parts; interviews and actuality shots – that tried to accurately (sometimes it even felt
exaggerated) represent busy job of the airline employees. Those clips were
mainly used as a (visual) background to the narrative.
The interviews were filmed mostly with a mid-shot, where an interviewee looked at and spoke to a person, not directly at a camera, which normally makes
a certain speech look and feel more real and is also more comfortable for speaker.
There were also some extreme close ups focused on facial expressions,
mainly if an interviewee was asked a surprising question which brought
out more emotions than the usual. Background of shots was plain and simple
as expected, since the main focus is on the interviewee himself/herself.
As
written previously, the main focus is the objectivity and reality which
reflects in a vast number of actuality shots that capture telephone conversations
between potential customers and those working – that sometimes included a close
up on a monitor, boarding procedures etc. This is done to give authentic airport
ambient feeling and also some establishing shots, mostly involving landing or
departing planes, probably for the same reason as well as keeping the content
more diversified and therefore their audience more entertained. I must also not
exclude establishing shots and long shots of foreign countries and their
sights, Those came as a visual companion to new routes explanations and some
fillers in between text.
There
is really not much to say about sound effects since there were very little if
any. To be honest, everyone has an idea about how an airport sounds like so
adding background sounds would be completely unnecessary.
All
in all the shots selected were completely appropriate if I can even judge that
myself, making the story much more pleasant than the recitation would have
been. Moreover I also enjoyed the content itself, which built a wholesome
experience that will not be easily forgotten.
I watched this short documentary specifically to have a look at how they used establishing and actuality shots since that is exactly what I have in plan of doing, as well as the sit down interviews.
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