Tape Wizard and the Magic of Short Docs
I found this great mini-doc today about Amulets - a local Portland musician who makes incredible ambient music using, as the doc shows, tape recorders from Goodwill and other amazing lo-fi parts.
These short profile documentaries are hard to pull off without falling into news / Office-style talking head interviews or just plain boring scattered footage. The filmmaker does a great job blending the music (from onstage, pre-recorded, and in the home-studio) in with small tidbits of Randall talking through his process. I feel so much more connected (enough to say Randall in the last sentence instead of Amulets) to the hope of what he’s making even though it’s only a 10 minute glimpse into his world.
What a great achievement in such a short doc.