Documentary Research

I have recently being watching some graffiti documentaries so this blog post will include links to the documentaries and the notes that I have made while watching them. 

Banksy - Exit Through The Gift Shop

•      Montage intro, leading up to the ‘Title’ of the documentary.
•      Interview to begin video with Banksy.
•      Banksy is a silhouette; lighting is focused on the background.
•      Narrator over the documentary explaining the main character/person ‘Terry’.
•      Anyone involved with graffiti is blured out.
•      Information montage about street art.
•      Interview with ‘Space Invader’ – face blurred out.
•      Footage of graffiti writers creating work and spraying walls,
•      Numerous montages with narration over the top.
•      Is this documentary a prank on society? Inside joke between Banksy and Shepard Fairy!

Style Wars (1983)

•      Intro Shot of subway trains – Shot at night with one streetlight that reveals ‘bombed trains’.
•      Informative factual narration over the top of the documentary.
•      Interviews with the police, writers and their families and the general public.
•      Footage of the writers out on the streets painting.
•      Montage after interviews of a lot of ‘bombed’ trains.
•      Footage and interviews about ‘underground’.
•      Silhouette type shots.
•      Still images used as well as moving image.
•      Included in the writer’s interviews is them explain their feelings about why they write.
•      Interview with the mayor.
•      Information given from ‘Seen’ about how to do graffiti.
•      Writers talking about how they get their paint.
•      Music/sound tracks used in the video link well to the footage being shown in the documentary.
•      Talks into the history and different styles of writing/graffiti.
•      Relationships between writers in discussed.
•      Explains how other forms of creativity are similar to graffiti – Rapping & breakdancing – Being in the spotlight, making a name for themselves.

    Getting Up 

• Graphic animated intro
• numerous interview with graffiti artists at the beginning skiing why they do what they do.
• various locations
• montages of footage over the writers talking about there passion
• quotations from the writers which are shown on screen as the subcategories of each new main question throughout the documentary. 
• explanation of the history of graffiti.