Film Analysis:Standard Operating Procedure

Section 1: Interesting Technique
If all the real scenes are gone, and all you have in your hand are hundreds
evidence pictures, how to make a documentary out of them? Errol Morris gave a
cool solution.
In Standard Operating Procedure, they use hundreds graphics with After Effect to
make those still pictures alive, by cut into the music beat, by key frame, by special
effects to connect them together to make more sense or tell a story.
In the interview part, they use non-traditional framing, sometimes interviewee on
frame right, sometimes in the left, sometimes in the middle. While time pass by, the
shots got closer and closer slightly, to drag you deeper and deeper into their
memory, to examine more of those soldiers’ and officers’ personalities and feelings.

In the staged scenes and staged reenactments, the filmmaker used special lens
and very artificial light. They use macro lens to reveal the face of a dead prisoner
with a extreme close-up, the motion of the dead body was sealed into a plastic bag,
and the noise of the zipper. Make you feel you are right there by the side of the
dead. They use wide-angle lenses and artificial lighting to portrait some cut-away or
insert shots that include the barking dog, the prisoner kneeling down at the left
bottom corner of the prison, and thousands of photos falling from the ceiling and
piled in the empty prison corridor. Voice over from the interview with montage
editing and creative editing were used to line the story down by standard
procedure, while the investigator talking about how they make the judgment that
what is  S.O.P. The red S.O.P. stamps on those files revealed how the war made every
individual into a name tag and cold stone in the tomb, or, living like a cold stone in
the rest of their life.
Section 2: Theme
It is always good to recall a film in your mind after watching it for several days,
which particular shot is still fresh even you didn’t pay that much attention while you
were watching it; Which particular feeling is still haunting you when you were
touched by some similar props and facts. Yes, documentary is even more impressive
by that, because you knew it’s real. Like the futility of war.

After 3 week since I watched Standard Operating Procedure, the shot that a black
dog barking towards us with creepy teeth, the shot that thousands of photos falling
from above into the empty prison, are still haunting me.

One of the female soldier said: “I shouldn’t have join the army, it doesn’t
worth it, it just doesn’t worth it. It’s the right time and right place to make this
documentary, or, I think the director will prefer, to get there earlier and show it
earlier. If they would have watched this documentary before they decided to join the
army, no matter how poor they were, no matter how  good the benefits were, they
might think it over. You may not change the world and the fact, but thinking over
don’t do harm.

We already have tons of documentaries about stupid wars, but the war still goes
on and on. No matter how famous Super Size Me is, McDonald’s still goes on and on.
While everyone is speaking, no one is listening; while everyone votes, money still
rules. Just like the very early documentary The Man With A Camera revealed, no
matter how intelligent the human beings are, they just can’t understand themselves,
they just can’t stop bite and fight, and somehow, every morning on the run, they tell
themselves, life is short, fuck everybody else.