AMY - ESSAY

Apply one filmmakers theory of documentary film you have studied to your chosen documentary. How far does this increase your understanding of the film?

In Asif Kapadia's documentary Amy, which is about the life of Amy Winehouse, Kapadia could be seen as a personal documentary filmmaker as he collected and edited hundred of hours of footage of her to make this film. Kapadia shares some traits with an observation filmmaker such as Kim Longinotto, as they both research deep within their chosen project to feel a more personal connection to them; which will ultimately reflect onto the Spectator. Although Longinotto speaks personally in her documentary as a voiceover, Kapadia is different where he does not speak his thoughts at all. Instead, he shows the spectator his views via the use of Micro features. Kapadia’s documentary speaks directly to the spectator through voiceovers of the people who were involved in the time of what was being shown. This influences the spectator to create new opinions on Amy and not what is just being shown. Kapadia wants the spectator to feel a certain way about Amy and does this through the archived footage he edited in certain ways; this included handheld camera footage and paparazzi footage. All of these micro features help the spectator to feel more involved with the documentary, as they create a feeling of intimacy with Amy’s ‘real’ life. Kapadia's main theme he wanted to express was that of what publicity can do to your life and what the corruption of fame does to people. 

These ideas are very prominent in the montage of her rise to fame around 1 hour into the film. Here there is a montage of pictures and videos of how Amy has been overwhelmed with fame as she is the front cover of many magazines. The camera tracks Amy walking across the street of New York and the handheld camera zooms in to Amy where the spectator can fully see her insecurity towards these new environments. There is also a variety of short cuts which emphasise the hectic nature of Amy's current life and her quick rise to fame. As the spectator, we feel sympathy for her as we can see how overwhelmed she really feels towards this corruption of fame. Furthermore, due to this style of documentary filmmaking, we can see every emotion Amy feels and we begin to feel it to as we experience a sense of awkwardness when watching her being bombarded by people. This differs in the work of Kim Longinotto where she utilises very long cuts for a more realistic storytelling where the spectator can see all viewpoints of the event unfolding. This style of documentary filmmaking mainly expresses the truth and uses no propaganda in order to change the spectators views. Due to Kapadia's style of documentary filmmaking, we can see every emotion Amy feels and we begin to feel it to as we experience a sense of awkwardness when watching her being bombarded by people. This is also prominent in Longinotto's work as she uses lots of different shots such as; over the shoulder shots and shot-reverse-shots in order to express to the spectator her true feelings of what is occurring. Footage from this 'rise to fame' scene is taken from paparazzi who do not stop taking pictures of her; which in turn, makes the spectator feel as though we are invading her personal space as her facial expressions seem to explain how she feels uncomfortable. This helps me understand the struggles that Amy went through as Kapadia's main goal is for the spectator to sympathise with Amy and see her life through his eyes.

Within the Grammy scene, Asif Kapadia uses documented footage to capture Amy's live reaction of accepting the award. In terms of the camera’s unobtrusiveness, there are echoes of Kim Longinotto’s work, an observational filmmaker who also distances herself from the subject; where she lets the subject get on with their lives without intrusion. This means that the people on camera gain a voice that is able to be heard instead of manipulated into a different viewpoint. This is different from Kapadia where he uses features such as handheld camera and montage in order to present a certain view on Amy, for the spectator to feel the same way. This is evident in this Grammy scene, where this  whole scene focuses on Amy and her reaction to receiving this Award; giving her the certain voice and presence on camera. Kapadia aims to make Amy's behaviour feel natural, as he presents an overt use of cameras and a live audience with Amy, which makes it difficult to completely capture unaltered behaviour. In this scene Kapadia makes it seem as though Amy is putting on a facade where her behaviour is different from her usual recklessness. There is a dichotomy between the supposedly ‘intimate venue’ in which Amy finds herself, the and the fact it’s being broadcast to millions of people across the globe; so, whilst there is a sense that we are getting close to Amy, there is, perhaps, a greater sense that she is simply acting up for the camera.This is apparent in her ‘shocked’ facial expression as she sees Tony Bennett on screen, which looks, however, engineered for the camera. She also reveals that she would be happier with drugs which gives the audience consolation towards Amy as her pleasant life has now come to one with destructive capabilities. Kapadia uses a combination of archive footage, carefully edited with retrospectively captured voiceover, to manipulate our response to Amy. Therefore, there is a degree to which this is a relatively subjective film – Kapadia’s own interpretation of events, many years after they happened. This helps the spectator understand how Kapadia wants to present Amy and how the cost of her life was her fame. 

In conclusion, Kapadia and Longinotto both resort to learning a large amount of their chosen subject in order to present many perspectives to one topic. They both utilise micro features in filmmaking in order to express their personal viewpoint as this would enlighten the spectator into why they have made this film.