Film essay

Raphael Pires

Survey of mass communication

Oct. 3, 2012

Professor Carpenter

                                                                        Film

            Eating McDonalds every day is bad for you. That sums up about all the knowledge I've gained throughout my life from watching films. Considering the only documentary I watched that remotely interested me was “Super-size Me.” Aside from that I hated watching any type of film in high school, I thought it was a waste of time. Now that I’m in college, I seem to be more interested in the art of film making  I hope to accomplish a recently discovered goal of mine to make a documentary someday.

            “Take out a piece of paper and something to write with,” is what the teachers would say before they put on a documentary for us to watch. What that really meant to me was “nap time!” I couldn't comprehend why we would watch documentaries, they were boring and most of the time about something I could care less about. The only documentary I remember staying awake for in high school was “Super-size me,” which is about a man who decides to eat McDonalds for a whole month. Considering I like food, I figured I’d give it a try.

            Continuing to reject every documentary thrown my way since “Super-size me,” I was sad to find out that in my Survey of Mass Communication class this semester we would have a whole section dedicated to film. Hoping to gain a bit of appreciation (and extra credit) I decided to go to the film festival that is held at Valencia to hopefully find something interesting about film. In doing so I learned about the Human Rights Film Center. They are an organization that makes films to bring awareness about problems in the world. I was intrigued by the idea and began to do some research about some films they made. Eventually when my communication class got to the film portion of the class we watched documentaries about “The Doors” (the band), and the Bang Bang Club (a group of war photographers). By this point I seemed to appreciate the art of film making a lot more, which made the film portion of the class more enjoyable. The way the film makers can convey an emotion about something in the film, just by camera angles or a certain type of lighting, amazed me.

            Because of how much film has been a part of my life this semester, an idea about me possibly making a documentary has been growing on me. At the film festival held at Valencia, I saw how much the makers of the film (Khaati Suun) cared about the problems going on in their home country of Nepal. Considering I am originally from Brazil, I thought about all the problems that need to be made aware to the public that occur there. Although most of Brazil is industrialized and a lot of the problems that happen there are noticed by the government and can be handled accordingly, there is still a big part of the people who live life completely separate from modern society. In the Amazon rainforest there are people who live like their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. A lot of these people are in dyer need of medical assistance as well as housing assistance. Recently I’ve been spit-balling the idea of making a documentary on the lives of the people who live in the Amazon rainforest to some other Brazilian friends of mine.

Honestly most of my life I hated watching film. I thought that it was a huge waste of time and money. I’ve had a lot more exposure to certain types of film this year and have had the opportunity to learn why these types of films are made. By understanding these films more I have truly grown fond of the art and believe it to be a useful tool to show the people what is going on with certain areas of the world. I don’t know if I want to make films for a living, but I know that because of the films I've seen this semester, I definitely want to explore the possibility of me making one that can help people in need.