As above, so below is an American horror documentary film directed by John Erick Dowdle in 2014. It actually was a mockumentary, a friction film pretending to be a documentary. It includes mixing genres such as horror, thriller, and mystery. This film has shown the real crew's experience which they are exploring the Catacombs of Paris. Today, we are going to discuss a documentary and the six modes of representation by Bill Nichols. It is about real issues.
There are 3 assumptions of a documentary. Firstly, filmed events are not staged, hence providing an authentic look. Documentaries are non-fiction films, they depict on imaginary but based on the true story. The last assumption is documentaries filmmakers are assumed to observe the events and make an objective record of the events. As an example, the news is a kind of documentary. The difference between action films and documentary are action films manipulate events such as color, lighting, angles while documentary can depict a version of the truth, it is shaping the film techniques. The six modes of representations are poetic, expository, observational, interactive, reflexive and performative. Poetic mode is a way of representing reality via a series of fragmented visuals and subjective impressions, incoherent acts and loose associations. It will not show you the environment directly and blurriness is one of the elements of poetry. For example, a crazy camera movement was pixelated is due to the fragmentation of the visual. Secondly, expository mode is a disembodied and authoritative voiceover that being descriptive and informative. It provides visible information in the imagery and unseen information in the voiceover. The overall effect of this mode is subjectivity, a direct and transparent representation. The third representation mode is observational. It allows filmmakers to record unobtrusively what people did when they were not explicitly addressing the camera. There is no interaction involved between the filmmakers and the characters. Interactive mode appeared from the desire to make the filmmaker's perspective more evident and allow the filmmaker to participate more actively in present events. This mode tells us what may happen for the true story. It shapes the truth to make interviewers say what we want them to say. Besides, the reflexive mode showing us we are using cameras. It was similar to interactive mode where it will reveal the truth. It makes the conventions of representations themselves more apparent and to challenge the impression of reality. The last mode is the performative mode which stresses subjective aspects of a classically objective discourse. It recreates the footage to let audiences experience what happens to the person.
As above, so below is a film talking about an Archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe named Perdita Weeks has devoted her whole life to finding one of history's greatest treasures: Flamel's Philosopher's Stone. According to legend, the artifact can grant eternal life and turn any metal into gold. When she learns that the stone is hidden underground in the Catacombs of Paris, she assembles a crew to guide and document her historic mission. As they begin their descent, the team members have no way of knowing that they are entering their own personal hell.
This film has used four types of modes of representation which are poetic, interactive, reflexive and performative. For poetic mode, ‘As Above, So below’ has a few scenes is blurred and unclear. For example, the scenes are blur when they were running, when they climb and fell, the camera dropped off their head or hand. Therefore, the scenes are very unclear, and it definitely showed the audience that it is filmed real, and it is a documentary. For example, The scene of Scarlett ran back to put back the stone and renew it to rescue George. The scene was very blur because she was running and rushing in time to rescue her loved one. Next, for the interactive mode, the actors in the movie have been talking together with the cameraman, Benji. For example, Scarlette always ask him is he okay when he screamed or hurt himself. Besides, the others also talked to him when he was stucked halfway climbing in the narrow pathways which full of bones. Furthermore, for reflexive mode, we can know that this movie that we are watching is a documentary. For instance, Benji check the cameras by saying “Camera A checked”, and placed it on the crews’ head carefully. They had also said about the journey and the purpose, which were going under the Catacombs of Paris to find the philosopher’s stone. In this movie, the actors told us that everything is real, but we as an audience, have to decide whether to trust or not. Furthermore, for the performative mode, this movie has pretended to be a documentary. This movie is actually a mockumentary, which means using documentary style to film a horror film.
In conclusion, this film is a documentary film which contains horror elements. It let us know the truth and makes us feel like we are experiencing it. For me, this is a meaningful film although is has a lot of horror scenes. The characters have shown us a great attitude that should not give up easily and they finally successfully escape from the cave. It also delivers a message to us no matter what happens or we encounter any difficulties, we must be persistence till the end.
REFERENCE :
Bill Nichols. Introduction to Documentaries.
Notes given by lecturer
FANDOM. (2019). As Above, So Below | Horror Film Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia
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