Documentary: Analysis of Tattoo Tears- Nick bloomfield

Tattoo Tears (1979)

Nick Bloomfield

The documentary “Tattoo Tears” Is set in a young offenders institute in the late 70s in America, and in this Documentary we are able to pick out what elements make it different from the usual documentaries.

Sound Equipment & sound edit techniques

They have totally different equipment to record the sound; there would have been 2 people who are part of the film crew in here, the camera man and the sound operator. One technique that was used was the sound from the person in the cell continuing onto the second shot. The sound “bridges” two shots and in a way, hiding the edit from you. This is called a ‘Sound Bridge’ and is a way of fooling you into thinking these shots were joint together.. You can see this in the beginning when the sound from one inmmate in the cell continues into the shot of the guy standing outside the cell. Even non-diegetic music can have the same effect, in the sense that if it was being played over a sequence of shots, it can still be considered as a ‘sound bridge’ as it links the shots together.

Camera shot types and edit decisions

We have a long shot and a close up cut from one to the other, the close up obviously allows us to focus on the character’s facial expression whereas the long shot before is used to set the setting, setting the mise en scene, letting us know the relationship between the two people. If it hadn’t started with the first Long Shot, we wouldn’t know who the other person would be. Whereas from before we know that they are on different sides of a cell door, the cinematography allows this, this is the ‘Mise en scene’. We now know that one guy is locked up whilst another guy is out there, free to do what he wants, trying to wind him up, asking him why he is in prison.

The camera is also moving, and it is quite shaky, suggesting that it is less ‘constructed’. If you’ve got tripod, dollies, and a smooth perfect static camera, you’d feel like someone is really thinking about making or constructing their film. Whereas, if you’re just walking around with a handheld, it makes it seem more real and unplanned. We then have an interesting shot where you cannot particularly see what is going on but it’s also out of focus and blurred, suggesting that time was not taken to make it look too proper and professional, therefore making it look more real, capturing or trying to illustrate “grittiness” within the prison.

Mise En scene

In terms of Mise En Scene, we then have the lighting. There is dark lighting throughout and when it comes to the scene with the inmate in the cell, his identity is held back from us. We do not get to see his facial expressions at all, whereas we see the face of the guy on the other side of the wall. At some points his persona comes across very “cocky” as he always has a smile on his face. There are various things he does which imply he is very aware of the situation, such as; looking directly at the camera as he is just about to provoke the other inmate about his mother. So the fact the inmate is able to willingly interact with the camera man to create drama makes you wonder how many other people are doing the same.

What is really important about the Mise En Scene is that, we are arguing whether it seems to be impartial since there is no voice over, so it seems to be impartial, there is not really an opinion being expressed by the voice over, not so much a sense of bias and arguably, its objective, its 3rd person, a ‘fly on the wall’ documentary.  It’s like a little bug that you are unaware of that’s filming you and that’s the idea of an objective documentary. It’s like the camera is away and you don’t know it’s there in front of you, and us as the audience look at it and think that the people are acting normally and are not influence by it. But with a camera in front of your face, knowing you'll be filmed, it would be very hard for you to not be affected by it subconsciously. It may make you slightly more alert. Hence the reason why a “fly on the wall” type of documentary is quite hard to be considered accurate. In the introduction, the Director himself once spoke about how he and his female partner filmed the documentary. He mentioned how they filmed it for 3 months, and the both of them they were “scared for their lives” since they had to be very upfront with their equipment, carrying it around in a pram. Because he was male and had to carry the equipment in a pram through young offenders institute with a mixture of criminals and people who were in there for various reasons, mental illnesses, murder etc. He said that the prisoners called him a “fag” non – stop. He also mentioned how they almost got raped within the production of the documentary. The point is, you’ve got this objective way of filming where there are cameramen who are supposed to be invisible, the filmmakers show you the reality of what’s going on, but actually the people are totally aware of the cameramen and therefore may not be acting as normally as they would have. E.g. when the inmate says “check this out” to the camera man, He is basically saying “hey, come over here and film this!” because he knows the reaction he can get from his inmate behind the door. So there is a notion of acting going on between the inmate on the outside. There’s a performance going on here. You’ve got a sense of awareness that they are definitely acting up to it.

So when it comes down to it, Nick Bloomfield has created an actuality based documentary but the points I was trying to make is aimed to challenge the accuracy and believabilty of the whole thing. It is clear that there are subtle things you can do to enhance the focus points of the documentary and set the overall tone without it being in your face. all elements from mise en scene to camera angles help create a "real life" feel to it.