Notes of Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003)

Pre-production activities

• Contact people involved in Arnold's life and the ones that could offer us all the necessary information (like de lawyer, the police officers, friends, neighbours, etc.) and interview them.
• Decide where do we want to film (setting).
• Get all the home movies of the Friedmans.
• Organize our work (in what part of the film include the old photographs, the home movies, the interviews, videos of the court or the different shots and images, etc.)
• Find a place for filming in which the person who we are interviewing is related.
• Research information of the case and the different points of view of the persons.
• Ask for permission of the court and the family for doing this movie.

Footage

• The people filmed were all the members of the Friedman's family, the lawyer, the policeman and everyone that could be involved in the case.
• The setting in which the people was interviewed was in places that characterized them (like the office of the lawyer, the living room of the house for the mom, the bedroom for one of the sons, etc.).
• Also used home movies and photographs of the family, videos of the court, images from the police and included in the film with jump cuts.

Post-production

• The editor added scaned photographs as the interviewer was speaking, making the audience feel the atmosphere that this creates and for understanding better what was really happening in the house. In this way the voice is different to the shot.
• All the images and videos included are added in the exact moment of the interviews so it has a better relation, like when the person is telling something that appears in an image, there the editor includes it.
• It has no sound, only in some parts a background music that helps the audience to enter to the mind of the person speaking and all the problems that they are facing.
• Film makers didn't want to use a narrator/talent or voice-over because all the movie it's made up by the interviews, so if they would included a voice-over it would lost the appearance of "reality" that the movie has by letting the persons speak by their own without someone asking them anything.

Message/ideas

• Not everything the news tell you it's exactly like that.
• What do the family felt and what problems they had to face when everyone was thinking only about the crime done by Arnold and prejudged him and his family.
• Creat doubts in the audience and confuse them about if it's true or not that they are guilty and in the end of the film we still don't knowing the truth.