This film was both visually interesting and humorous. The film's subject is William Starkoff whose personality is more the focus of the film than his life story. In fact, for much of the film William lies about himself or tells fake stories, and this is highlighted with his long made up story about his future plans, which include going to the moon on a rocket ship made out of carrot and starting a colony with Tom Cruise and Ellen Page. Facts are not the basis for this film, but even through some of his lies and fake stories, the audience is given a portray of William's personality.
Humor plays a large role in the film, and something I took away from it after I watched it was that William perhaps constantly uses humor as a mask to hide behind. But, nonetheless, the film still reveals William's personality to the audience, and in some cases one can learn more about a person this way than by simply hearing their life story.
This film was thoughtfully constructed to work well visually and to have diversity in scene location, which added interesting variety. The film is Matt Pickering's project, and he edited and filmed it very well. I particularly liked the visual effect of the in car scene when they go through the Dairy Queen drive through.
I found this Story of a Life to be really interesting too, mostly because of how different it is from the other ones I watched. I really liked how we learned a lot about William through him telling crazy, fake stories. It's a very unique way to learn about a person. My favorite part of the short documentary was how it was filmed. The shots were really well composed, the editing was quick and sharp. It seemed to match Williams personality, very animated and alive. Even though the content was about very mundane things, like going to Dairy Queen (which was one of my favorite parts, too), William's humor and the great editing techniques helped them become intriguing and fun to watch. I really, really enjoyed this Story of a Life and will definitely keep it (mostly the shots and the editing) in mind when I create my own.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the humor is central to the point. I really like this film; I admit that Matt's skills (and technology) as a filmmaker really win me over, but of course most students wouldn't be able to make such a polished film
ReplyDeleteMatt had a long history of "un-doing" my assignments, of taking what I asked for and doing the opposite while maintaining the core idea. I imagine that having William lie through the whole thing was his starting point.
You point about how William uses humor to hide is an excellent point. I like this film, but think about how much more powerful it would be if Matt had spent the time and effort to get behind that mask.