“The Garden” is a documentary about an urban garden in downtown Los Angeles, and the community’s fight to keep the garden from being redeveloped. This garden is special because it’s in an area that was once part of the 1991 LA riots, but has been transformed into something positive for the community. The documentary takes us through the community’s fight to keep the land for their garden, and keep it from the greedy owner/developer and the corrupt city government that did not have the constituent’s best interest at heart.
“The Garden” was nominated for the 2009 Academy Awards for best documentary. It of course lost to “Man on Wire”, but it deservedly was nominated because of its good documentary form. My first reaction when I started watching it was the poor camerawork and poor color. LA is best place in the US to shoot a film because of the amount of bright light they get 360 days a year, yet sky in this film had a blueish tint to it. Also there was shaky camera work, I think they were using prosumer and maybe consumer level cameras.
Yet it’s content that matters. Kudos to the editor for telling a story through visuals, interviews, and sound. The sound design was nice, although my TV’s speakers experienced some problems in parts of the film, which I thought was very weird considering how tiny my speakers are. Overall though I liked the film because there was a lot of passion involved and the story’s revealing is far reaching to other parts of the US, where land owners and community work for different goals.
Storytelling is everything. People are wired for stories. If it’s written well, people will be drawn into it, unable to step away and waiting for your next word.
People who tell great stories are usually successful in their personal and professional lives. People who can’t tell stories have a more difficult time drawing people to them.
It’s just one of a million things they don’t teach you how to do in school.
In film, just like in books, there are many ways of telling a story. If the film is using first person narration, then that film will have to spend a lot of money and make sure they do good writing. Many films switch scenes, or chapters, back and forth and that’s OK too. It all depends on the complexity of the plot, and how many people are involved in the storyline.
Even in documentaries. The guy doing all the shooting with the camera is trained in imagery, not storytelling. There has to be an outside force forcing a story into the film. Yes, it may have to be fake, but it’s a requirement. Usually it’s best to just hire someone skilled in story development. It’s the same with reality shows, if there isn’t drama going on then they will make it up, without a story you have nothing.
Even if the content is interesting you still have nothing without a story. Or at least nothing deliverable to an audience.