How much information about everything can you squeeze into 90 minutes? Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, being the economists they are, were just as economic with their time in managing to cover parenting, corruption, cause & effect, incentives and crime in this limited amount of time in what they call Freakonomics.
Keeping to the theme of being unconventional and attempting to reveal the other side of the norm as we know it, the credits are rolled at the beginning (and of course, more detailed at the end again). The documentary begins with Dubner and Levitt giving a real estate scenario that reveals the hidden agendas, incentives and facade of mutual benefit in the real estate industry. Essentially, the point of this is to get the viewer to ponder on something they may have never thought of before. this style is carried throughout the documentary; the authors discuss a topic, give a brief scenario introducing the next theme and a linking documentary is played. What makes Freakonimcs different is that it is a documentary made up of an amalgamation of other shorter documentaries that the authors basically give educated opinions on.
The first featured documentary is about how names supposedly shape the way a child's life is going to turn out. This documentary is an entire exaggerated re-enactment also making use of vox pops of the ordinary woman or man on the street, where they have casted actors/actresses in order to protect the identities of those with the said "unfortunate" names. This is an ethical method often adopted in documentary film making in order to protect the dignity of those the topic pertains to. The narration of this piece (A Roshanda by any Other Name) is even scripted from a humorous point of view, as this is after all, a light-hearted topic. Straight after this, we are taken back to our two authors, so it feels like the authors were also watching with us at the same time (in a spatiotemporal sense) and we therefore feel included in the discussion that follows.
Given that this is a documentary based on a book by economists, one is bombarded with a lot of data and infographics - something that can make a few less mathematically inclined individuals switch off and lose the hidden truth of some pieces in the attempting to decipher some of the data. such an example is that of the It's not always a wonderful life piece featured here that also failed to make use of any direct interview shots with experts, relying only on monotonous narration albeit its actually gripping content.
Because this features four chapters within the one bigger picture, we experience different methods of storytelling and one ends up comparing these different techniques as they are watching. For example, I noticed that in Pure Corruption, Alex Gibney uses music to sort of arouse different emotions and reactions as well as using the same track he opened with at the end to give some continuity. There is also a heavy reliance on lighting to capture different emotions here.
Keeping to the theme of being unconventional and attempting to reveal the other side of the norm as we know it, the credits are rolled at the beginning (and of course, more detailed at the end again). The documentary begins with Dubner and Levitt giving a real estate scenario that reveals the hidden agendas, incentives and facade of mutual benefit in the real estate industry. Essentially, the point of this is to get the viewer to ponder on something they may have never thought of before. this style is carried throughout the documentary; the authors discuss a topic, give a brief scenario introducing the next theme and a linking documentary is played. What makes Freakonimcs different is that it is a documentary made up of an amalgamation of other shorter documentaries that the authors basically give educated opinions on.
The first featured documentary is about how names supposedly shape the way a child's life is going to turn out. This documentary is an entire exaggerated re-enactment also making use of vox pops of the ordinary woman or man on the street, where they have casted actors/actresses in order to protect the identities of those with the said "unfortunate" names. This is an ethical method often adopted in documentary film making in order to protect the dignity of those the topic pertains to. The narration of this piece (A Roshanda by any Other Name) is even scripted from a humorous point of view, as this is after all, a light-hearted topic. Straight after this, we are taken back to our two authors, so it feels like the authors were also watching with us at the same time (in a spatiotemporal sense) and we therefore feel included in the discussion that follows.
Given that this is a documentary based on a book by economists, one is bombarded with a lot of data and infographics - something that can make a few less mathematically inclined individuals switch off and lose the hidden truth of some pieces in the attempting to decipher some of the data. such an example is that of the It's not always a wonderful life piece featured here that also failed to make use of any direct interview shots with experts, relying only on monotonous narration albeit its actually gripping content.
Because this features four chapters within the one bigger picture, we experience different methods of storytelling and one ends up comparing these different techniques as they are watching. For example, I noticed that in Pure Corruption, Alex Gibney uses music to sort of arouse different emotions and reactions as well as using the same track he opened with at the end to give some continuity. There is also a heavy reliance on lighting to capture different emotions here.
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