2024 09 23

Preparing for dinner at the Northwoods lake cabin. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Last night, we watched Ren Faire, the three-part mini series on HBO, and I was kind of blown away by the project. Going in, I’d assumed it was a documentary and my brain was primed for a good doc-viewing experience. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I categorize it in a new still-developing genre of filmmaking that blurs reality with narrative forms of storytelling, and I’m not yet fully sure what to think of it. Much like news has largely become a facts-optional landscape of entertainment-minded-viewer-pleasing content, the genre of documentary filmmaking is going through a similar transformation, with modern tools of moviemaking allowing for some clever new approaches. Stylistically speaking, Ren Faire was one of the best films I’ve seen in recent memory (also, I’m such a sucker for the anamorphic lens work they used).

Today, I came across this quote from Stanley Kubrick:

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

While I’m not sure the quote ties in with my thoughts on Ren Faire, I will add that oftentimes I find movies pay too much attention to style and not enough attention to story. While they did some amazing work on the project, especially with editing, audio, and cinematography, you started to get the sense that this crew could make damn near any group of people interesting, so what’s the point of spending so much time learning about this specific group? It started skewing into style over substance territory.

All that said, if you are into film at all, give Ren Faire a watch. And now I’m off to try and find a reasonably-priced anamorphic lens.

-Clayton