El Velador Film Analysis
El Velador, or The Night Watchman, is a 2012 documentary directed by a Mexican-American photographer and filmmaker named Natalia Almada. Almada’s works mainly focus on Mexico’s history, politics, and culture. In El Velador, she observes how the Mexican drug wars has affected the city of Culiacán in Mexico. She not only displays the violence caused by the war, but rather what it means to live in violence.
Throughout the documentary, the overall theme of violence is displayed and indirectly spoken about. The director employs her theme through multiple close ups and wide angle shots of memorial posters and flyers of the men who were killed by the drug war, recording sounds from radio and television news broadcasters talking about how the war …show more content…
Sound is an essential component in this particular documentary since there is not any direct dialogue. For that reason, it helps give meaning to the shots. For instance, the viewer gets to hear how quiet and deserted the town is due to the amount of dead bodies it holds, and how distraught families are by these killings. In one of the funeral scenes, the viewers hears a mother crying and screaming “my son.” If sound was not included in that scene, the viewer would never get a sense of how much these people are affected by these drugs wars. They would have only seen the funeral scene as another one and see it is just as a another daily routine for the people. Editing is also a major element because it still helps the director create a narrative even though there is no direct dialogue and gives her the opportunity to manipulate her footage. For instance, through editing the director is able to create an organized sequence of her sound bites and shots so they may not seem like random images put together, and ultimately create shortened or extended time duration of them which shapes the way viewers perceive the footage. Although the documentary is not a movie, the viewers still want a film that starts with a logical start, builds tension as it progresses and an ultimate resolution or some type of conclusion to what has been
Throughout the documentary, the overall theme of violence is displayed and indirectly spoken about. The director employs her theme through multiple close ups and wide angle shots of memorial posters and flyers of the men who were killed by the drug war, recording sounds from radio and television news broadcasters talking about how the war …show more content…
Sound is an essential component in this particular documentary since there is not any direct dialogue. For that reason, it helps give meaning to the shots. For instance, the viewer gets to hear how quiet and deserted the town is due to the amount of dead bodies it holds, and how distraught families are by these killings. In one of the funeral scenes, the viewers hears a mother crying and screaming “my son.” If sound was not included in that scene, the viewer would never get a sense of how much these people are affected by these drugs wars. They would have only seen the funeral scene as another one and see it is just as a another daily routine for the people. Editing is also a major element because it still helps the director create a narrative even though there is no direct dialogue and gives her the opportunity to manipulate her footage. For instance, through editing the director is able to create an organized sequence of her sound bites and shots so they may not seem like random images put together, and ultimately create shortened or extended time duration of them which shapes the way viewers perceive the footage. Although the documentary is not a movie, the viewers still want a film that starts with a logical start, builds tension as it progresses and an ultimate resolution or some type of conclusion to what has been