Doc Mode Activity 3 (12/3/25)

After deliberating about it, I wanted to do something similar to Sherman’s March for this doc mode activity. I decided to document a small piece of my relationship with my wife without any context, for the audience or even my wife. Interestingly, her reaction to the uncertainty of the project yielded similar sentiments as shared by women at some points in Sherman’s March.

Sherman’s March is a participatory mode documentary in that the filmmaker continually puts himself into the fray, both in the actual fray and, more often, by including his behind-the-camera voice. Because of the brevity of this assignment, I chose to include only the latter. I only talked as I thought was necessary for responding to my wife. The lack of volunteering extra input beyond the bare minimum caused her to get flustered. It reminded me of the one woman in Sherman’s March insisting that the camera was in the way. At one point, my wife even mentioned that she’s going to have a say in the final project before it is submitted. I responded nonchalantly, but in the end, I edited it all by myself. That editing was minimal really. I simply added the introductory bit and adjusted the volume throughout to try to make the dialogue as clear as possible. I felt that editing it any further in a self-evident way would make the documentary lean more into the reflexive mode than I wanted. That was also the reasoning behind why the doc consisted of only one extended clip. The same day that clip was filmed, I filmed two others, also with my wife at our kitchen table. I intended to include those, but for the sake of the mode type and the length of the assignment I did not.

Ultimately, my doc mode video is of the participatory mode because I did not refrain from inserting myself into the content to some degree. My silence is as loud as my words. It reminds me of Free Solo, which, while surely not a participatory documentary altogether, has significant sequences of that nature. My dialogue reflects on the documentary, but that does not qualify it as reflexive mode because those reflections are content more than stylistic choice. If I were to do this activity over again, one thing I might do differently is to include myself in a way that puts my spouse more at ease. Though it was amusing and something we can laugh about now, I recognized a sort of immaturity in my manner that was consistent with that of the filmmaker in Sherman’s March. I believe participatory mode as described in our readings is less about inserting ourselves in an obnoxious manner, though it can be about that, and more about showing how the film is a connection between the filmmaker and audience. Choosing to be obnoxious about it can actually distance the audience from the filmmaker, as can be seen in the way that some people have a disdain for the Sherman’s March filmmaker.