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Clifford Geertz’s idea that culture is “webs of significance” that people themselves have spun is a helpful way to think about Paris is Burning . Geertz argues that culture is not just behavior. It is the layered meanings behind behavior, and the job of the observer is to offer thick description, not just to say what happens but to interpret what those actions mean within a particular world. Paris is Burning  can be read almost as a visual version of thick description for Bla

Mysterious Object at Noon  is one of the clearest examples we have seen of a truly hybrid film. It moves across Thailand collecting fragments of a story from ordinary people. Those fragments are then restaged with nonprofessional actors and woven into a loose, fictional narrative about a disabled boy and his tutor. The result is part travel documentary, part fiction feature, and part experimental game. It records real people in real spaces, but it also invites them to invent

Both Between the World and Me  and Paris is Burning  are about people whose bodies are treated as disposable by the world around them. Coates writes as a Black father to his Black son, trying to explain how America has been built on the control and destruction of Black bodies. Paris is Burning  follows Black and Latino queer and trans communities in New York who face many of the same systems of racism, poverty, and violence, but also deal with homophobia and transphobia. Putt

For this short documentary, I wanted to explore how the expository mode functions when applied to something as practical and technical as camera stabilization. Bill Nichols describes the expository mode as the classic “voice-of-God” form that directly addresses the viewer, organizes information in a clear rhetorical structure, and uses commentary to guide interpretation. While my project doesn’t rely on a God-like disembodied narrator, it still embraces the expository commitm

Documentary has always carried an implicit promise that it will make the world visible. But the question that follows is just as important: visible to whom, and from whose point of view. When the only perspectives shown on screen come from dominant or already empowered groups, documentary ends up repeating the same narratives rather than expanding our understanding of lived experience. This is why voices from different backgrounds and communities are essential in nonfiction f

In my second Mode Activity, I chose to take a participatory approach. The film, A Short Conversation , consists of one out of context shot that I got some weeks ago. The viewer might recognize the space as El Bambi Truck Stop and Café from my previous documentary film, El Bambi . While taking a break from filming for that documentary, my assistant was talking to one of the line cooks in the kitchen. As seen in this film, I quickly framed up and stayed still while he prompted

Bill Nichols’s definitions of documentary modes help explain how filmmakers shape truth through different relationships with their subjects. The Participatory and Reflexive modes are often intertwined but distinct in how they foreground the filmmaker’s role. Both involve a self-aware presence of the filmmaker, but the Participatory mode emphasizes interaction with the world, while the Reflexive mode emphasizes reflection on the process of representation itself. In comparing

My short documentary El Bambi  observes a small truck stop diner in Beaver, Utah as it wakes up before dawn and moves quietly into the rhythm of a new day. The film belongs to the observational mode, which resists narration, staged action, or interviews, and instead finds meaning in what unfolds naturally. I wanted to let the space speak for itself through small details like the flickering light in the diner’s sign, the spilled flour and patinaed counters in the kitchen, or t

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012) and Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog  (1956) both confront the horrors of mass violence, yet they do so from different temporal and emotional perspectives. Night and Fog  looks backward, surveying the remnants of the Holocaust a decade after it occurred, while The Act of Killing  looks sideways—into a present-day Indonesia where perpetrators of genocide still walk free, proud of their past. Both films examine the machinery of human

Although on the surface nonfiction cinema seems like an objective capturing of the world, upon further investigation, we find that it is...

I took this picture of some 16 mm film that I shot with Andrew. We were only able to afford two 100-foot rolls, and this was me...

This is a picture of my jorts. Although there is a little bit of contrast in the blue and white threads, there is an affinity in diagonal...

I was visiting the Find Lab in Provo and I was struck by the architecture of Center Street. With this photo, I was going for very deep...

This photo is meant to demonstrate saturation. The neon sign itself is very saturated, but because the wall behind it is white, a lot...

This photo demonstrates a fast rhythm. The repeating lines across the frame bring high energy. I think this photo would’ve been better if...

This photo demonstrates high contrast lighting. I think I could have benefitted from increasing my exposure a little bit, but overall I...

This photo is meant to affinity of color. I think it accomplishes that goal because the other objects in the scene are desaturated. This...

This photo demonstrates affinity of tone. There isn't much contrast in the light values; there is a very low contrast ratio. This photo...

This photo of a chandelier demonstrates circle pretty clearly. There are also some instances of triangle created by the wires that hold...

This photograph of some blinds in my apartment demonstrates affinity of horizontal lines. The lines appear because of tonal contrast....