Seminar 11 - Senna Analysis

This seminar was the last one before the Easter break so we began by discussing the semester and the module and if there was anything we wanted to know/needed help with before we broke up. We decided to review our blogs to begin with and get some formative feedback from Chris to help us progress them over the holiday. When we reviewed my blog, I was told that I had given numerous examples of film analysis and research, as well as other research on sound within film and reflection on my learning process. I also had adequately shown my editing process throughout the module on the different assignments but I could use a few more screenshots to make it clearer. The things I needed to improve on were theoretical research and evidence of that (In the Blink of an Eye) as well as addressing the set film in the module, Senna (2010) by Asif Kapadia. As this was the case in many peoples blogs, we decided to watch the first 30 minutes or so of Senna and write any notes up about the editing and the film in general. After the seminar I went home and watched the rest of the film and continued to analyse it.

First and foremost, the whole feature length documentary contains only archive footage of back when Senna was still alive, with a mixture of racing footage, television and interview footage, behind the scenes footage and family home video clips. The fact that these are used alone in a film of this length really allows the audience to feel immersed in that time period and not have any jarring cuts of archive footage into full HD quality footage. It makes the film flow a lot better and brings the audience back in time as if they were watching this story unfold as it happened. The use of just archive footage was definitely considered from the start of the production as there are more recent interviews with various figures in Senna's life and professionals of the motor industry at his time, that are used as voice over in the film with no talking heads like you would expect from a conventional documentary. This is once again to not ruin the immersion of the content of the film and pull back to other people so that the audience can focus on the one character that matters, that is Senna himself. This also allows the audience to feel a more personal connection with Senna as we see him in almost every clip in the film and he is discussed by all these different people.

This technique however, raises the issue of the audience not knowing who is giving the interview and how they are actually relevant to Senna's life, but a simple and effective work around of this that the documentary uses, is to bring up a on screen text of who the person is, and what their relation to Senna is. This can be argued as being quite dismissive of the persons importance to the story as they aren't important enough to be shown on screen, however as the narrative is focused on building up Senna as a person, it is used very effectively at keeping the audience informed and engaged on the main character, Senna.

Another major technique that is used very effectively in the narrative is focused heavily on the rivalry between Senna and Prost, making the film become more of a drama piece about the events occurring between the two over the course of their careers. The way in which this is done is partly through the selection of footage around the two and how the audience is lead to empathise with Senna over Prost through more footage of him being shown, both racing and in interviews, so the audience can get  more of a rounded perspective on him as a character whereas Prost's history isn't shown at all. This is to set up the narrative as a classic story of protagonist v.s. antagonist which builds up the drama and friction within the film, making it more enjoyable for the audience to engage with. It is constructed in a way that makes it an underdog story, with Senna being described climbing from racing go-kart's to becoming F1 Championship winner. This is much like the documentary brief we were given at the start of the semester, The Movement, as they both follow one persons goals and dreams while building empathy for them with the audience and representing them as passionate and iconic people in there respective fields.

Finally, the film is extremely efficient at building and releasing tension around the major plot points in the film through the use of both montage, and mostly, music. The use of music is very carefully considered as it is predominantly used with voiceover over close ups of senna or montages of him to build empathy for the character and to get into the mind of him so we can feel his emotions. However the music is almost always cut out when Senna is actually racing and is replaced by either just the sounds of the F1 cars by themselves over a brief montage of him driving, and then voice over is introduced from the more recent interviews of people talking about his driving technique or him as a person in general. This assertion is usually backed up by a clip that shows what was described, by him driving. An example of this is 12 minutes into the film when he is described by a voice over as being fast and that he pushed the car to its limits, then we see a clip of the car going around corners and wobbling dangerously as it appears to be struggling with the speed it is going. To go back to my previous point, when the music is used on a build up to a race, it normally builds pace or pitch to create a powerful tension, then crescendos by being sharply cut out and replaced with an loud engine sound of a car. As the audience knows that Senna dies in an F1 race, this technique constantly provides heavy tension then relief to the audience as they want his death to be prolonged as much as possible, due to the empathy towards him, built through a mixture of the techniques listed above.