Week 9

The Weeping Camel

The documentary this time is about myth in Mongolian people. The myth is about the ritual of the newborn baby camel. It is about the baby that being rejected by its mother and the documenter holds the story of how the ritual could cure the situation. The documenter is also about the Mongolian people that live there and how the life they run. This documenter is very interesting in the term of how the camera works and the story that is improvised from the original one.

The movie starts with some introduction to the Mongolian family. The family runs a ranch with lots of camels and horse and goat. The documenters are telling the family life as the Mongolian. The next is they tell about the newborn camel baby and how the parent rejects his born and refuse to breast feeding him. After that, a ritual is held by the owner in order to make the mom become calm and want to breast feeding the baby. The ritual is very interesting because it is only using a traditional music instrument and a song that sing by the woman. Nevertheless, the feel and the sensation when we hear the song is very calming and beautiful. No wonder the camel become very calm and she then wants to breast feed her baby without any hesitation.

The next thing is about the camera movement in this documentary. There are many interesting part that is applied very well in the movie. For instance is when the camel is delivering her fist baby. It is in the dark situation, but the image is very clear, and without much flash or lighting effect. The other is when he must follow the two kids to the town to buy some supplies.  He probably walks and not ride any camels in order to shoot some nature and their journey moment. Moreover, during the sandstorm that appear in the movie, it should be the hardest part in the movie because shooting the sandstorms is difficult because the camera lens will get lots of dust and sands inside it, resulting a very noise picture. However, I did not see any of these footages during the screening. They able to face the obstacles and get rid of it like nothing happen.

The story flows of this documentary are variants. I believe he change a lot the plots and scenario for this. For example, it might be taking long time to get a newborn baby that being refused by their parent. And on that occasion, the documenter is in his luck because there is one, and then he decided to add the footages of the ritual. He decided to focus to the ritual and the newborn baby and her mother. It means that he might change his initial idea because something better pops up in the field. And within this situation, documenters are challenged whether he will stay or move to the new ideas.

At the end, the documentary is very interesting. There is many interesting part apart from the camera movement and other technical issues. The most interesting part is the ritual and its meaning. The documenter is able to deliver the ritual to the audience very well. The documentary has not many words, but it has been spoken by the activity and the act of the characters. Overall, the documentary teach us lots of things that might be occur and we should act fast to make it better.