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Mobile technology - citizen journalism - availability of phones and other transportable/accessible recording hardware means
Advantage Kapadia takes with digital technology isn't the same advantage Broomfield and Moore uses it. Kapadia and Moore both push an ideology but Broomfield doesn't
How Far have developments in digital technology had an impact on your chosen documentary film?
In Amy (2015), Asif Kapadia takes advantage of the development in digital technology by accessing home video/personal clips, TV broadcasts and other footage to be able to create his trademark 'True Fiction' narrative structure.
This is perfectly shown by the very beginning of the documentary, as it starts with a home video of Amy Winehouse and her friends, having fun and singing. This short clip sets the audience's expectations for the rest of the film - showing them that this is documentary about the personal life of Amy Winehouse, from before her fame, and also shows Winehouse as a fun person who is immeidiately personable and relatable. It starts to construct a narrative via a connection to the audience by establishing time, place and character, an essential part of story. Another examples of this is the use of previously unseen footage of Winehouse on the way to her first recording session, recorded by her friend and manager at the time Nick Shymansky, which also showed her personality, as well as setting up our understanding with some of her relationships with people. The candid, unprofessional look of the videos is instantly relatable as something we all create and share (especially recently on social media), which helps to create an informal more realistic theme to the videos. So Kapadia uses digital technology to create an emotive story that explains her personality and makes her relatable, which can be seen from the beginning until the end of the film.
Building on my previous point, Kapadia uses the home videos from family and friends (available due to advances in digital technology) to push his ideology/opinion on the subject. Footage showing Winehouse's spiral into drug addiction, self harm, bulimia etc. is shown in almost graphic detail. This gives the audience the idea that she was a victim of fame and people around her; not to be blamed for her death, which is clearly what Kapadia himself believed while contructing the documentary. In addition, editing is also used to reinforce this ideology, with interviews being placed over the top of the emotive home video imagery to create an overall feeling of empathy, especially as the interviews were often from family and friends expressing sadness at the position she was in, and also viewed her as a victim. Kapadia uses footage not available without advancements in digital technology to enforce his own ideology, which effected the film in that it was able to show Kapadia's ideology easily and subtly.
Advancements in digital technology mean that the ability to record video is widespread. As a result, it's easy to find, and as Kapadia has shown use, multiple recordings of an event to show different perspectives. For example, at the famous Belgrade Concert where Winehouse was too intoxicated to perform, multiple sources were used, e.g. videos from the crowd where you can hear people complaining, to official TV footage of the event. This allowed the viewer to get different opinions on the event (ie the complaining in the crowd), which may shape the opinion of the spectator. These perspectives may differ from the dominant ideology of the film and/or society, which gives the documentary more depth and detail than it may first appear. In addition, combining these alternative perspectives with various interviews overlayed on top (as seen in the documentary in this scene, with friend Lauren Gilbert and Winehouse herself) about the event, it serves to create an even more varied view of the sitation, and as a result allows the audience to make up their own mind on it. Advancements in digital technology affected the documentary in that it allowed the filmmaker to show, and let the audience debate between, various perspectives quickly and easily.
In conlusion, advances in digital technology have allowed Asif Kapadia to develop Amy Winehouse's 'character' in the documenatary, making her more relatable and to the audience, while also giving the audience the choice to make up their own decision based on varied sources.
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