Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Harlan County, USA

Discuss in two paragraphs how filmmaker Barbara Kopple cinematically represents the miners, the coal executives, and the union leaders. Be sure to use specific cinematic elements in your discussion. What were your impressions of the film as a whole?

10 comments:

  1. Harlan County, USA does an incredible job of accurately depicting the lives of the mine workers. One cinematic technique that caught my attention was the sound. Many songs sung by the miners that described their struggles and strife were layered over footage of them working and doing day to day activities. In an article by Turner Classic Movies, Kopple reportedly says that "they'd be talking, then they'd burst into incredible songs they had made up themselves." The many songs included in the documentary encouraged a sense of empathy and sympathy in the viewer. A stronger connection was formed between the audience and the miners as they shared personal made up songs as a way to cope with their problems. The songs really made the documentary a special, touching illustration of the terrible conditions in Harlan County. Before I took IB Film, I made films of my own that were predominantly documentaries.
    In my opinion the Harlan County, USA could have been a bit more organized and clear. It was at times hard to follow and keep up with what they supported, what they opposed and who the problem party was. (Duke Power vs the corrupt union). Overall it was very interesting and a brave documentary to produce and make.

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  2. Koppler uses a big deal of sound to represent the miners and workers as whole. She uses the miners singing and songs over their actions. She uses sound bridges of the workers singing then it continuing over to the next shot where the sound continues but we see the union workers continuing their strike. These sound bridges made an impact on the viewer by influencing the viewer to sympathize with the workers and understand their struggle and sadness. When focused on the executives, the sound was different, it was silent and you only heard the executives and what they were saying. It made the viewer feel no sympathy towards them and made the executives seem cold as all you heard was low ambience and their voices.
    My impression on the film as a whole was that it was impactful. It revealed a struggle that was very unknown to the world and helped you understand it and sympathize toward it through the use of sound bridges. I feel the juxtaposition of shots made a huge impact as well as it would go from a union meeting in a small room with few people preaching and planning what they had to say to a shot of the executives in a giant room of people with microphones and cameras representing the unions poor representation and understated voice in the cause.

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  3. The mise-en-scene in the film is very unique and special, because everything is real. The set is the real homes of the miners, the actual mine, and Harlan County. There aren't any actors or costumes, just the real people of Harlan County and their everyday clothes. Its important that everything on screen is real because it allows for the audience to better understand what the miners are going through. Their struggles are more accurately depicted on screen because nothing was scripted or set up.

    Another thing that not only shows Kopple’s intent with the documentary but is also a very interesting film technique is her use of diegetic and nondiegetic music. The blue grass music is something unique to this part of the country and has it’s own unique sound. People from corporate industries such as Duke Power Company are not usually associated with this type of music, but it’s the only music to be played throughout the film. I believe that in doing this Barbara Kopple tries to show the divide between the miners and the company and also makes a more personal connection between the audience and the miners, as music often does.

    My impressions of the film is exactly what the filmmaker wanted. I felt that the coal executives were greedy and didn’t care at all about the well being of the miners. This is what makes me love this documentary so much. This documentary actually made me feel exactly what they wanted me to feel, meaning she did a great job with this film. Even without a tripod it seemed she always got the perfect shot of what was going on. around her.

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  4. Kopple used a variety of film techniques to depict the miner’s struggle. One element that was heavily present was the non-diegetic sound. The use of bluegrass and country music adds to the rural tones of the film. The music, like it or not, helps the audience relate more fluently to the local population of Harlan County. The yearning heard in the voices explains the hardships these people went through. It also adds to the traditions of the area. Kopple used montage to show the region overtime. Kopple had to manage decades of information and using the montage allowed her to organize all the information so as to keep it interesting to the viewer. The interviews feel personal and that was important to the message of the film. It is important in a documentary amount a group of people to make it personal when showing them on screen in order to gain sympathy from the audience and put forward the main message.
    Overall I enjoyed the movie. Both my parents went to school for social work and I have been taught about the unions before. I liked learning more about the miners and their struggles. There was no voice-over, which in a way made it more intriguing to me. I also enjoyed the music that was very catchy. The film was one of the more well made documentaries I’ve seen.

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  5. Barbara Kopple, in her documentary Harlan County, USA, depicts the tragic struggle of day-to-day life for impoverished coal miners who risk their lives to barely make a living. The film’s opening shots give a very strong impression of the risks posed to the miners. The very first shot of the movie is a medium shot of a miner, surrounded entirely and enveloped partially be shadow, yelling “Fire in the hole!” to an unknown companion. The use of lighting, or lack thereof, prevents the viewer from knowing the surroundings and gives them the impression the miner does not know either. The filmmaker just as easily could have utilized a light of some sort to illuminate the miner’s face, but the shadow covering his face anonymizes him and tells the audience that, when in the mine, all miners are considered to be the same and all face the same dark struggle. Later we see miners hopping on a tread in the open daylight, later carried down to the dark mines, headlamps lit, with rock ceilings inches from their heads. The transition in lighting signifies the danger posed by the mine, the shot’s angle drawing attention to the lack of space and creating a sense of claustrophobia in the audience. The shining points of light from the miners’ headlamps contrasted eerily with the mine, making the miners themselves seem more vulnerable, as though they were those mere points of light, to be snuffed out at any moment by the shadows. The pattern continued throughout the movie, with darkly-lit moments generally posing danger to the miners and bright parts being safe points.

    As far as my personal opinion, I liked the film a lot more than I expected to. It gained a great deal of realism by deviating from the traditional movie plot format I had expected. The film stressed the down-to-earth nature of the conflict rather than portraying it as a final battle between good and evil. The editing could surely have been done to portray it as the latter. I thought the music used was perfect, not elevating the protagonism of the miners too far, and, for obvious reasons, fitting the film’s atmosphere. I could tell the documentary was not skewed from reality or staged to any extent, a feature I am sure many other documentaries cannot also claim to have. I think greater focus on the miners’ personal lives, outside their mining occupations, would have helped in personalizing them and drawing interest from the audience.

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  6. Barbara Kopple does an excellent job in capturing the miners of Harlan County in what is arguably the best documentary of its time. Rather than using narration to tell the story, Kopple let the miners, coal executives, and union leader’s actions speak for them. For example, rather than go out of their way to show the guns in the possession of the company people, the cinematographer lets them attempt hide them, exposing their deceiving ways. She followed the miners to the pick in front of the stock exchange in New York and while striking as well as interviewed people affected by black lung. She uses nondiegetic titles to relay facts against the companies and the miners. The editing is a bit ragged but it fits the context of the film. The workers themselves are aged from the hard work and the constant struggle with the company heads. The film does aestheticize the miners unlike other documentaries. Kopple uses folk music to invoke more emotions, specific to the miners struggle, such as “Which Side are You On?”. This specific song serves as a constant reminder of the historical continuity of the miners fight.
    Overall, I really liked Harlan County. I love documentaries and the many forms and varieties in which they come. Their perspectives are always enlightening. In this particular documentary, I felt as though Barbara Kopple really captured the spirit and passion of the coal miners. Not only does she display the horrible working conditions of the miners, but she also calls attention to the structure of power in Harlan County and the class struggle. Kopple also calls a lot of attention to the woman involved. Be it a wife, a daughter, and mother, or friend, they all worked together to call attention to the struggle. I found this to be a very powerful aspect of the documentary—how everyone was effected by the injustice of this system.

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  7. Harlan County USA is arguably one of the best documentaries ever made, as it truly showed what the coal miners during the 70s went through. Barbara Kopple did an excellent job in showing what was truly going on during this time, as most of the US population who weren't coal miners had no idea of what the miners went through. Kopple doesn't use narration to tell the story of what she discovered, rather, she let the miners, union leaders, and coal executives tell the story themselves. For the miners, she would use sound as a way to represent them. She laid tracks of folk/bluegrass songs about the wrongs of the coal executives and union leaders over the images. So the audience would see these miners working themselves to the bone, with the sorrowful music playing, creating a rather vivid image of the abuse the miners went through. For the union leaders, Kopple mostly used short interviews to represent them. Each interview would only be for around 5 minutes at the most, while the miners interviews were longer and more in depth. Lastly, the coal executives didn't really even have any interviews, Kopple mostly just used press conferences that the executives frequented, because the executives had no desire to be interviewed.

    I enjoyed watching the documentary, as it was very ahead of its time, with how real Kopple made it. She didn't fear what would happen to her when she filmed it, she knew that someone needed to reveal what was really going on, and she decided that she would be the one to do it. Everything was very well done, nothing really took away from what the film was trying to do, although I could have done without the music, but oh well.

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  8. This film is considered a revolutionary documentary. Harlan County USA is a documentary about a group of miners who have been wrongfully stripped of their rights as citizens in exchange to feed the wants of power hungry industrialist executives working for Duke Power Company. This was not some stale interview intensive documentary. This documentary incorporated shots that you would typically see in a narrative film. The filmmaker clearly is on the side of the miners based on the fact that the documentary is from the point of view of the miners. We get little to no knowledge on what is happening behind the scenes with the executives. As a result, we really understand the conflict better and relate to the argument of the miners more. This gives a deeper connection between the viewers and the main subjects. This is extremely effective because if we had been shown a balanced view of both factions then we would begin to understand the conflict from both sides. This is not the point. We are meant to connect with the miners more. Therefore the lack of shots which would give us insight to the P.O.V. of the executives forces us to relate with the miners whether we like it or not.

    When we see the executives we typically only see them flurrying about in a worried manner away from the cameras. We are led to believe that the union leaders are the only ones in contact with the miners considering we see them only in meetings. Whatever information we receive about the executives comes from the mouths of miners, not from a direct primary source. The sound in the film conveys the point of the view of the miners tremendously. For instance, we may be presented with a typical shot of the executives sitting around in an aloof manner but the constant sad bluegrass music invokes a sad feeling where we pity the miners. This music is unique to this part of the country giving it more connection to the subjects. High up industrialists are not typically depicted with this type of music, so the juxtaposition of an industrialist being shown with the “common folks” music once again relates back to our connection with the miners.


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  9. Harlan County USA is really rad for a few reasons. The first reason I think is because Barbara Kopple pairs testimony by the miners with folk songs that coalesce with their plight-some of them even being sung by those around the strikes. The soundtrack of a documentary is more important than the soundtrack of a narrative in that it has to help shape the blunt truth of something-it has to enhance the rawness of what is unfolding. Kopple never narrates, but rather allows the testimony of firsthand witnesses to tell the story of the Union and the struggles they continually faced.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the frame composition of the union and their opposition. In the scene where they blocked the road at the train tracks, you were able to see the support of the Union through the boundless numbers of people overflowing in the frame, which we, as viewers, assume extends past the boundaries of the frame.

    Although Kopple probably had little to do with the lighting levels that naturally occurred in the hall where the Union constantly met, in the places of residence, and outdoors, I feel as if the different types of lighting contributed a lot to the way the meaning of the film was portrayed. In the places of residence there was a warm reddish tone to the lighting that allowed the spectator to identify with these people more as real living souls than as mere spectacles in a film. In the mess halls, it seemed as if flourescent lighting took place with coalesced with the harsh and business like demeanor of those on strike as soon as the scene switched from anywhere else to there. It quickly matched the intensity of an interrogation and made it easy for the audience to understand the seriousness of an interrogation scene. The natural lighting outdoors to me, symbolized hope in that it was bright and a natural phenomena. This, because every time they were outdoors, significant advancements were made.

    I enjoyed the film because it was very raw and real. It achieved verisimilitude because it was the cold hard truth, so it was extremely difficult not to achieve verisimilitude. I like things that are easily believable because I would like to think that I am a realist-a realist and a dreamer, actually. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Harlan County USA is really rad for a few reasons. The first reason I think is because Barbara Kopple pairs testimony by the miners with folk songs that coalesce with their plight-some of them even being sung by those around the strikes. The soundtrack of a documentary is more important than the soundtrack of a narrative in that it has to help shape the blunt truth of something-it has to enhance the rawness of what is unfolding. Kopple never narrates, but rather allows the testimony of firsthand witnesses to tell the story of the Union and the struggles they continually faced.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the frame composition of the union and their opposition. In the scene where they blocked the road at the train tracks, you were able to see the support of the Union through the boundless numbers of people overflowing in the frame, which we, as viewers, assume extends past the boundaries of the frame.

    Although Kopple probably had little to do with the lighting levels that naturally occurred in the hall where the Union constantly met, in the places of residence, and outdoors, I feel as if the different types of lighting contributed a lot to the way the meaning of the film was portrayed. In the places of residence there was a warm reddish tone to the lighting that allowed the spectator to identify with these people more as real living souls than as mere spectacles in a film. In the mess halls, it seemed as if flourescent lighting took place with coalesced with the harsh and business like demeanor of those on strike as soon as the scene switched from anywhere else to there. It quickly matched the intensity of an interrogation and made it easy for the audience to understand the seriousness of an interrogation scene. The natural lighting outdoors to me, symbolized hope in that it was bright and a natural phenomena. This, because every time they were outdoors, significant advancements were made.

    I enjoyed the film because it was very raw and real. It achieved verisimilitude because it was the cold hard truth, so it was extremely difficult not to achieve verisimilitude. I like things that are easily believable because I would like to think that I am a realist-a realist and a dreamer, actually. :-)

    ReplyDelete