2 Pac - Final 24 Film Review

For my documentary film analysis, I watched 2 Pac - Final 24.   The film, which is one in a series of several dealing with celebrity deaths, documents Tupac Shakur's life and how it related to and ultimately culminated in his untimely demise.

2 Pac - Final 24 is split into two alternating sections, one dealing with the last 24 hours of Tupac's life and one telling the story of his rise to fame.  A mixture of interviews and narration are used to guide the story.  The parts dealing with Tupac's final hours use primarily narration accompanied by dramatic re-enactments, while the story of his life is told through A-roll of interviews and archival footage of Tupac performing and being interviewed.

The movie, while primarily about Tupac's life and death, also incorporates some of the people who played a large role in one or both, such as his mother, rival rapper Biggie Smalls, and the CEO of Death Row Records.  It is told primarily from a third person point of view, but incorporates first-person when the subject of an interview describes a part of the story.

It also has a dark, mysterious mood to it and follows the format of an action/spy movie.  It incorporates cinematic aspects characteristic of spy movies such as a split screen with a timer shown to depict what is happening at a certain time before the tragedy occurs.  The lighting is very moody during the interviews, and the dramatic re-enactments all take place at night, which give the film a dark feel.  The music used consists primarily of hip-hop beats.  

The dramatic re-enactments use actors to portray the people who were actually present during the events described in the documentary.  Using pictures and actual footage from said events as a reference point, the filmmakers recreate the scenes as closely as possible using sets, and costumes.

Overall, 2 Pac - Final 24 is a very well-made film and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in hip-hop history.  It is also very engaging, more so than most documentaries, because of the murder mystery format.  The only thing I didn't like about the film was that all of the people interviewed were close to Tupac, resulting in a slightly biased image of the rapper.

The movie:

Don't Take This the Wrong Way...

Since we've been given a lot of freedom with these blogs and are told to write whatever is on our minds, I'm going to do just that.  And what's on my mind right now is plagiarism.  I recently got in trouble because a paper that I wrote comparing two poems was too similar to that of another student (who will remain anonymous).  I'm not denying that they were similar, but I have a few things to say.

The student in question was absent the day that we were assigned this paper, which I'm sure is a common excuse for plagiarism.  However, in class the day that we were assigned this paper, we went over the rubric, which was to compare the literary elements used to develop tone, and our teacher essentially told us which literary elements were present and what tone they helped to establish.  Needless to say, the only step we as students needed to take from there was to add more words to what she had told us.  Therefore, it was inevitable that the majority, if not all, of the papers be overwhelmingly similar, considering we were essentially told what to write in class.

The student who got in trouble alongside me was not in class and therefore was not spoon-fed the answers.  So to help him, I let him read my completed essay as an example, knowing that they would all be, in essence, the same paper.  However, and not to put the blame on him, but he did not know exactly which ideas were mine and which ones were given to us in class.  The result was too papers that were a little bit more similar than the rest.

I'm not saying that I wasn't in the wrong and that anyone in particular is at fault, nor am I trying to gain anything by saying this.  But if the purpose of plagiarism is to prevent us as students from stealing each others ideas, then when the ideas were not really mine or anyone else's to begin with, but rather the ideas and knowledge forced upon us by the county curriculum.  I could understand if it was math or another subject where the prevention of plagiarism is actually ensuring that students retain the material, but what is there to retain in an instance like this?  The point of comparative essays is to better our critical thinking and analysis skills, which can't be done if we are given someone else's analysis.

Incoming Documentary

Now that the dystopia trailers are done, the next major group film project that we have been assigned is a 3 to 5 minute documentary.  This past Friday, our homework assignment was to  describe an idea that we've had regarding the documentary's topic.  I really liked the topic that my group came up with, so I decided to share it with you.

Blair is known for it's arts program.  And I don't just mean the CAP.  Blair has a great film program, an award-winning newspaper, an outstanding theater program, and, of course, a great music program.  My group wanted to do something about the arts scene at Blair, so we decided to focus on the thing that we were the most interested in: music.  Originally we planned on focusing mainly on the hip hop scene, but we decided that there was enough variety amongst the artists at Blair to make a documentary about the music community as a whole.

I am looking forward to making this film.  It will be interesting to interview and tell the stories of all the bands at Blair, such as Ladle Fight, as well as the solo artists, like Brian Griffin.  Hopefully we will be able to cover most of the artists at Blair, but I have a feeling that since the time limit has to be taken into account, we will end up focusing on a few artists in particular.

Here's an example of what I want it to be like: