DOCUMENTARY PROJECT: Post 1

1.)    Bibliography of the film AND a brief summary
The Year Punk Broke. Dir. Dave Markey. Perf. Sonic Youth, Nirvana, The Ramones, Dinosaur JR., Babes in Toyland, Gumball. 1992. Geffen Records, 2011. DVD.
This documentary is about – literally – the “year punk broke” onto the music scene. It features six of some of the most famous punk bands at the time from the 80’s to the early 90’s – when they thrived the most. The documentary is a simple set up and placement of their “regular” lives with their concerts on stage. It perfectly features not only their stage personalities, but how, in reality, their stage personalities live true off stage as well. It focuses mostly on Sonic Youth and follows them throughout their 1991 tour of Europe as they add on and subtract the featured bands – such as Nirvana and Mudhoney. This documentary, although to some it may seem to be lacking a story line, is a great representation of the confusing, ever-changing, moody and hard core lifestyle behind the punk and grunge movement.
2.)    Analysis of the rhetorical devices the filmmaker chose to tell the story
First, I will discuss the actual camera angle “rhetoric” the filmmaker decided to use while creating this film. In general, there were a lot of varied camera angles used to provoke different things like distorted camera angles, eye-level views, sub-eye-level shots, over-the-shoulder shots and point of views. All of the camera footage and angles and shots were forcefully made to be distorted. For example, the camera man continually zoomed in and out to make it blurry and never really focused on anything specific. It was made basically like a home-movie. It was also distorted because the editor added in the “flare” type of effect which is basically that when someone moves, their original outlines stay in place, so the entire screen would then be filled with the repositioned and colored outlines. As for the specific views, the sub-eye-level-views were used the most. The camera man purposefully tilted the lens of the camera down a bit when focused on the band members so that the audience could not clearly see the person or their eyes fully. This, to me, represented the avant-garde logic of these punk rockers and how people cannot fully grasp it – which is why things are not shown up front or in focus to the audience. The over the shoulder shots and point of view shots were shown more during the concerts. These two techniques were basically used to the camera man could get the closest and most personal shots possible.
The distortion of all of the camera angles and shots and edits, I believe, was purposefully done to represent the utter confusion and chaos of punk and grunge rock. Although these camera angles made my head spin a little bit, they did perfectly capture the feeling one would feel if they were either at the punk concerts…or even just talking to one of the band members since their logic is just as chaotic as their music.
As for the regular rhetoric, rather than the camera rhetoric, I found that contrast, juxtaposition, drama and context played a large part establishing the filmmaker’s purpose.  Contrast and juxtaposition was shown first in the beginning to introduce the movie. It was expressed when the film quickly switched from the calm “get together” of Sonic Youth and Nirvana to the crazy, wild and out of control punk concert. This continued to occur all throughout the documentary as the filmmaker switched between the footage of the “behind the scenes” of all of the odd-ball bands to the upfront footage of their uncontrollable concerts and the crowds. Drama also played a large part in the film as well and was shown through the narrative, emotional and associative editing cuts done to the film. The one most prominent case of drama was when the all-girl punk band was playing and the editor created an emotional cut where there was a slow-mo of the crowd against the background of the band playing. Here, this created the dramatic emotion of how much this punk-era effected people – as shown by the crowd. As for the context, the “back to reality” shots – which showed the down to earth bands back stage or behind the scenes continuing on with their regular oddities – truly brought the audience back into context of the story. These shots were there to show that although they are now “big stars” who fill stadiums, they are still those goofy, hard to understand individuals who were once trying to fill a small club with fans.
Rhetorically, there was also a lot of anecdotes that came from the band members. Although the director may not have planned them to occur, he definitely wanted them to be included because these little burst of insightful...or distracted...thoughts from the band members in the documentary definitely made the audience aware of the context they were in.