Dark Days Analysis

Dark Days is a documentary by Marc Singer about homeless people living in an abandoned section of the underground railway in New York called the 'Freedom Tunnel' and documents their daily lives as they struggle to make a living, a home and a life with not what they are given, but with what they can achieve themselves. I quite enjoyed the documentary on a number of levels, firstly the content was very good and actually had an underlying narrative, something which a lot of documentaries do not contain, which was that the 'homeless' inhabitants of the tunnels were being evicted out and moved into houses.
The documentary starts with a montage of establishing shots of New York and slowly moves into the underground. I think that this is a very effective technique to set the scene and location for the documentary and makes it very clear to the audience as to what the rest of the film will be about. I will adopt this technique when shooting and editing our own documentary by establishing the location first (Liverpool) and then moving on the focus of the film, the street performers and introduce them slowly with a compilation of different shots.

Another thing I liked about this documentary was the font used for the text overlays through the film and this was because it really fit with the style and themes presented in the film and actually made the overlays smoother and more accepted by the audience. This is something I will carefully consider when using text overlays in our documentary as if they are just a standard font, then they don't link in with the films themes and just seem out of place, tacky and just don't really add much to it.
The use of a variety of shots and compositions through Dark Days also makes it very entertaining to watch and it never feels as though you visit the same place, even though the majority of the documentary is filmed in a very small, cramped location. The use of tracking shots, close ups and long shots, mostly all tripod based, gives the documentary a professional feel and contrasts slightly with the grimy theme of the film and makes it seem neater. Standard interview camera shots were also used (BBC close ups) along with cut aways, L and J cuts to give the film a more rounded use of compositions.
Finally the interviewer is never heard, or shown which gives a very voyeuristic theme to the film but also makes it feel more professional as it is keeps to the conventions of a standard documentary. I think we will attempt to do this in our film as well, and try to keep voice overs to a minimum to make the film seem tight and professional.