The 13th is a documentary about the the 13th amendment as well as other racial inequalities that America has been faced with.  "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This is the 13th amendment of the constitution and serves as the basis of this movie.

 

The documentary itself starts off by giving some facts about the oppression blacks have faced and are still facing. They discuss "the War on Drugs," the amount of prisoners in our prisons (1 out of 4 blacks being in jail which can be seen as a loophole of the 13th amendment), the civil war, the KKK, crack cocaine, minor crimes and large punishments, as well as today's problems with inequality. The documentary was filmed in the typical documentary style. It was people speaking, with a b-roll of either pictures or videos, with music that fit the voices and pictures perfectly.

 

I thought it was cool because we had just done our own interviews in class and this showed how good these "simple" tasks could really be. After all, it really is just layering pictures over a video and adding music..just a lot more time and effort was put into these interviews compared with ours. The B- roll was a mix of videos, court hearings, pictures, and newspaper clippings. The videos were mostly from old films such as "The Birth of the Nation" which was a profoundly important cinematic event for both its historical context (not good and made up) as well as its importance as an early movie.  It had a huge response, and confirmed the story that many whites wanted to tell. Most of the images of this film were demeaning, monstrous, and extremely socially inappropriate. It was also very accurate about the way the issue race could  operate in the United States and was kind of responsible for the rebirth of the KKK. This was a perfect overview for the movie because it showed how truly terrible blacks were treated at this time. The 13th also used many still historical pictures which also had a great effect because unlike the film clippings, these were real; they actually happened. This is the same for the newspaper clippings and the court hearings ( or in some cases the hangings).

 

 It used lots of instances of the Ken Burns Effect, where it would zoom into particular parts of the pictures to show intensity and exactly what the cinematographers were looking to portray. They would also use lighting to show off exactly what they wanted; in one of the interviews there was almost a spotlight on the person speaking, which helped because it limited other distractions and led the viewers eyes directly to the subject. They also always used the rule of thirds, at least during the actual interviews. They would position the people cheating towards the camera and would never have them facing out of the shot and never looking at the camera. They also sometimes had people being interviewed in the center of the shot but with pillars marking the rule of thirds on either side of the person which also had a cool effect. 

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I had originally watched this documentary for AP Government and Politics my sophomore year, and then again for AP United States History. Not until this time, my third time watching the movie did I realize how hard and time consuming making a documentary could be. While I could have guessed that it would not have been easy, after doing my own 1 minute interview, I could not imagine trying to do one that lasted an hour and forty minutes. This is an amazing movie and it would be really cool to one day actually get good enough to make something similar that comes close to how well put together that it is. As a pre-law/political science perspective college major student, this film really spoke to me because I would like to one day change the inequalities that we are faced with today and somehow help the people in our world today.