September Issue Documentary

Watched The September Issue (with my wife ;) (documentary about the making of the September issue of Vogue fashion magazine) What was interesting to me was the way the film makers crafted the story. The head of the magazine Anna has such a poker face that she is not very interesting to watch. Instead the film makers make her interesting by showing us how the people around her perceive her as very powerful and intimidating. (She's the most influential person in fashion, it makes sense that she would have a good poker face) The center of the documentary wound up being Grace, the creative director. Watching the film you get the impression that Grace is on the verge of quitting because she feels edged out and that Anna disagrees with everything she does. But at the end of the film Grace makes the comment that almost the entire magazine issue is her work, and Anna talks admiringly about Grace being a genius.

Made me think of Brian McDonald again. The film makers focused on probably a minor event during the making of the magazine issue, but because it had the strongest emotions (Grace being frustrated about her work being misunderstood and not liked.) and they made this outburst the spine of the emotional story. Like Mcdonald was saying, the audience feels the strongest pull to the strongest emotions.