4 - Editing

Editing in Baraka and Microcosmos
by Alexandra, Zach and Laura

Baraka: A Unique Way Of Editing

The method a documentary film is edited can guide the viewer to the ultimate meaning of the film. In both Baraka and Microcosmos, the idea of the unknown in our world is developed without the use of words, rather by the use of juxtaposition. This allows the audience to have their own opinion while they are shocked by images most do not see with their own eyes.

Baraka is a non-verbal film that has no actors, no script, and no voice-over and shows us images of landscapes, people, and animals from 6 different continents. It was directed and created by Ron Fricke and Michael Stearns, two Americans, in 1992. It is one of few movies shot with a high quality 70mm lens. Fricke, Sterns and their three-man crew filmed the beautiful images from 24 countries in a span of just 14 months.

“Baraka” is an old Sufi word that is roughly translatable as “a breath of life” and/or “a blessing”. This word, which happens to be the title of the movie, describes the images seen in the movie very well, especially those in the first section of it. In this first part of the documentary, we see mostly beautiful images of the great, untouched elements of nature our planet has given us, like the Iguazu Falls in Argentina.

The second part of the film was mostly images of the interaction, good or bad, that humans have with nature. This is seen by the incredibly busy traffic in downtown New York (pollution) and by the extermination camps of Auschwitz in Germany (man mass murdering man). The third and final part of the movie was all about preserving older cultures, death, and rebirth. The images that show us this, respectively, are the Kaaba, an important sacred area situated in Mecca where millions of Muslims go to pray, the burning of dead bodies on the side of the Ganges river in India, and the final shot of the stars, the same one as the movie opened with. To my teammates and I, the movie in its entirety represented a full cycle of life, starting with birth in the stars, nature, animals, humans, evolution of technology, death and finally, rebirth. But, since there is a lack of spoken words, there is room for different interpretations in guessing what the film’s meaning really is; the creators really leave it up to the viewers to decide for themselves what it signifies.

The main concept discussed in class this week was juxtaposition of images and how just the simple fact of showing one image before another can completely change the meaning of the second image. This is a concept first demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the early 1900s.

The shot of the man’s neutral face throughout the mini-film is always the same, but by adding different images before his face is shown tricks our mind into believing that he is for example, hungry, when the soup is shown, or sad, when the girl in the coffin is shown.

The most powerful juxtaposition of images in Baraka, to me, was when the three men were shown shoveling coal into a big burning oven, and then the image of the ovens in the concentration camps in Europe and Asia were displayed, where an unimaginable number of people were murdered for no valid reason. This came as a shock to me, seeing men doing their everyday jobs and then actually seeing that the end result of their actions was for a horrible cause.

Another concept discussed in class was the different dimensions of film editing, the first one being graphic relations. This relation describes the image’s shape, color and dynamic. For example, in a lot of the scenes in the movie there was an element that was red. I am thinking in particular about when an aboriginal person’s face was shown, close up, and he had a red line painted down his nose and right before we saw the reddish, brownish bark of the trees in the surrounding forest. The second dimension is the rhythmic relation, which relates to how long the image is shown on the screen as well as its speed or rhythm. In Baraka, many images are shown for an extended period of time to make us reflect on the issue that is being shown. For example, the traffic in New York City is presented for quite a long time and at a fast pace, just long enough for us to think about the pollution all the cars cause. The same rhythm was used in the scene following this one, where we saw thousands of people going up and down escalators in the Big Apple. Spatial relations come next, which compare and contrast two points in space. The comparison between the two ovens in the same scene described above proves this. The last dimension of film editing is the temporal relation, which permits to move back and forth in time, or even expand it. To my teammates and myself, the movie from beginning to end is a temporal relation, since we viewed it as a cycle of life, like previously explained. During the whole viewing we were constantly travelling through time in different areas in the world and experiencing a few minutes in each country’s cultures. In sum, all the different kinds of editing brought to these images in Baraka is what really makes the film unique and builds its story. 

Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe

Microcosmos: Le people de l'herbe – the original French title – is a documentary from 1996 filmed by Claude Nuridsany & Marie Pérennou. The film took fifteen years of research, two years of equipment design and three years of shooting and won multiple French César Awards awards. The word microcosmos refers to the microscopic world that we may not be able to see from the naked eye. In fact, this film revolves around the life and interactions of an insect in its natural habitat. Whether it is in a pond, underground, or in a tree, we are flooded with images that are very shocking and eye-opening.

 

Microcosmos begins with a fast paced lyrical song as the viewer is swarmed with aerial visuals of clouds and the sky. The film suddenly transforms to a close up look of a grass field and insects begin to appear. At first, we believe the film will be identical to Baraka, until we hear the voice of the narrator. Although the narrator does not say plenty, the quality of what she says is vital to the visuals: "Time passes differently here". During the film we get an idea of what it sounds like – noise of other insects – and what it feels like – their daily struggles – to be a bug. To couple the sounds of nature, a musical track plays that connects closely to each scene. For example, scary and intense music plays when we see creepy looking insects and playful music plays when we see bugs that seem funny to watch (Refer to video below). All in all, the sound of the film sets the proper mood and intensifies the image for the viewer.

The film also utilizes everything a camera can offer. Microcosmos was filmed with the aid of specially designed cameras called microcameras which allowed the directors to get clear and crisp close-up shots. The resulting image put everything in perspective and bugs began to seem life-sized. Nuridsany and Pérennou’s filming provided each and every angle of an insect’s habitat; from below, from above, from side to side, and so on. In one scene, everything was even seen from the point of view of a bee through its eyes.  This creates a connection with the audience and guides us to the understanding of a bug’s life. Since time passes differently in nature, numerous different editing effects involving the frame rate were done in the documentary. Some effects fall under the category of rhythmic relations where the length of what is shown controls how long we observe the image; slow-motions of ladybugs flying, time-lapses of flowers blooming and accelerated motions of plants eating insects. Another dimension of film editing is spatial relations where two things are related through similarities or differences. In several of these relations, we observe the differences between what we see and what we don’t see as humans. In one case, the directors’ use a close up of a bug in the dirt and then all of a sudden pan out to a forest trail which is all we would normally see (Refer to video below). In addition, a prominent dimension of editing is graphic relations where two images’ dynamics are compared. An example of this is when a trail of caterpillars are walking in a line then, moments later, we are shocked with the image of a mass of caterpillars that are swarmed together in a distraught pile. This image describes the discrepancy between an organized and a chaotic life of a critter.

Image after image, Microcosmos leaves its audience with different reactions. Most would have an aesthetic response where they believe the images are breathtaking. However, in a deeper sense, some may have a political response and believe we must pay more attention to things that may not be so obvious to us like nature. In the end, both Baraka and Microcosmos make us question what we used to have when ancient cultures and untouched nature was so pure before human’s evolved - an example of a nostalgic response. Keep in mind, although nature seems like such a large concept, it is “beyond anything we can imagine and yet almost beneath our notice”.

Reflecting on Both Films

Baraka and Microcosmos are films that have a very unique factor that we don’t get to see on a regular basis. With the lack of narration and the abundance of sound and images, it provides the audience with their own point of view, emotions and thoughts on the clips that are being displayed. These films have a special interactive dynamic that lets the audience become more engaged and concentrated on the hidden parts such as, culture and nature around the world. Most of the population doesn’t see what really happens in specific parts of the world, therefore, these films provide us with an educational aspect which informs us on the different realities of this world. These two movies help us acknowledge the fact humans may be taking over nature which can possibly be destroying our world slowly but surely.

 

Nature is what is keeping us alive at this very moment. It is providing us with help and in return we take advantage, abuse it and use it for our well-being. After viewing these two films, the images and clips were an absolute shock to me. We live our life like we’ve been told and only pay close attention to what is happening around us and what could possibly be affecting us. However, in these films we see what happens right under our feet without having an utter clue. In Microcosmos, we get to watch the lives of different insects in depth, for example; the inside of ant’s homes, spiders living in a bubble underwater or the birth of a butterfly. This movie truly shows a beautiful side to nature. As for Baraka, we get to see mostly negative effects of the use of nature for example; dump sites causing pollution, cutting down trees for no reason, blowing things up or using a large quantity of space to practice a certain type of religion. With the way our society is treating nature or going against it, rather than being at one with it, will soon result in a complete disaster of our world. After watching these two movies I had a nostalgic response to them and was reminded of a well-known disaster involving the drastic events of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that caused much of a catastrophe to the whole world. It was as if people didn't take enough precautions to avoid such disasters, and yet, till to this day, people still don’t try to do something to protect our world.

Click here to find out more on the BP oil spill

After much research, the directors of these movies took years to film in order to send out a specific message and get a political response from their audience or in fact or in fact make us recognize what our human race is doing to our environment. They are also trying to make us think hard and figure out what is the pattern and the things we are doing wrong in our everyday life. These shocking images will hopefully grasp everyone’s attention with a positive outlook on nature rather than negative and with any luck engage us into doing more for our environment.

With the high tech cameras available for our use today, Baraka and Microcosmos were two films with clear and crisp images. However, the editing used by the producers allowed us to see the world from another point of view. In both films, the main focus was to compare and contrast, use different angles, and hear only music throughout the film to create a personal opinion from each individual viewer.