June 11, 2007

Mad Hot Ballroom

There was a moment, near the end of Mad Hot Ballroom where I wondered if the team that was getting so much screen time was actually going to win. That moment got me thinking about a few other things, such as:

  1. Did they have someone prompting the kids before they filmed their conversations or did they just keep a film crew around the kids waiting for them to say something interesting or cute?
  2. Did they only film the one team that made it to the finals, or was there other footage of the other final teams that they captured and did not use? I'm just wondering if they planned to follow the one team and work with the footage they shot regardless of the outcome.
  3. What are the kids doing now and when is Mad Hot Ballroom 2 coming out?

There's a lot to like about this documentary. It was well made and did a good job of trying to capture the practices and performances. I think the film technique of directly interviewing the adults but using the "fly on the wall" technique for the kids was interesting. In a way, by having the kids casually talk to one another in front of the camera, you were given the impression that they were just being themselves and we were lucky just to be there for that particular moment. However, it hardly seemed likely that any of the kids would discuss the things they did just casually in front of a camera without some prompting. It was important to have those moments in the film, since it really was about how the program affects the kids in it. But it would be interesting to know more about how the film makers planned out the whole thing.

at June 11, 2007 8:47 AM
Comments

It would be interesting to see something about the approach that was taken. I always though that the dichotomy between the presentation of the adults and the kids was very effective, not in a "here's a new way of looking at things" way but more of a "here's a really well-done representation of what you'd see if you were hanging out and tracking this process."

You're right that you're not getting unvarnished looks at the kids... you're getting what kids want the adults to think they're like, with some moments of real honesty, and that's how kids are. They're smarter than we like to think and they're all actors. ;) I think it was amusing to get that view in a way that didn't offer a lot of mediation to make it feel as if the filmmakers were trying too hard to get "honesty". Like, not a bunch of prodding in a pseudo-psychological style, featuring clumsy attempts at leading questions and reverse psychology. That's what I mostly think of when I think of people trying to get "real" reactions out of kids, and it was neat to see something else.

Of course, the usual disclaimer: I'm probably reading too much meta-narrative into it, but that's how I saw it and why it worked for me. :)

Posted by: bdh at June 18, 2007 7:24 PM
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