The Archive: A Short Analysis

The Archive: A Short Analysis

The Archive is a short documentary by Sean Dunne and focuses on the lives of a man named Paul Mawhinney and his love of records. While the introduction of the documentary seems to focus more on the value of records, and Paul's collection, it quickly becomes and emotional story of how records are no longer valued. The director and his crew have gotten from their interviewees genuine human emotion and passion, making a heartfelt and soulful documentary.

The way the director approached creating this emotional documentary is very interesting. The composition of the documentary is relatively flat, and the colour pallet mainly consists of yellows or browns. This could be to represent the aging of records, like the yellowish covers we see on the shelves, but also to symbolise the records themselves. The documentary seems to move around like a record, starting from the value of his collection, to his sorrow of losing it, back to its value. It has been cleverly structured and constructed to create this feeling of the documentary almost being like a record played. This is complimented by the music, which sounds like an authentic record being played.
The sound design and recording for this documentary is superb. The interviews all sound clear, but most of all the choice of music, and the sound of the record player having finished creates an authentic and emotional atmosphere. Cleverly, the director chose music which starts of relatively cheery and fast paced, to slower and eventually somber sounding music. This was likely to convey the way that Paul himself feels, and the decline in the record business. This is further reinforced by the sound of the record having finished played at the end during the credits. This heightens this emotional feeling, but also could symbolise the idea of a decline.
The director also chose some visual cues to help emphasis the sadness behind the decline in records. For instance with the final few shots the lights switch off to the rhythm of the music, poetically stating it is the end of the song, but also the end of his archive. Furthermore, the final shot is of a checkout, and as the lights slowly turn off, the word "checkout" remains ingrained in our minds. Perhaps this clever composition was to insinuate this was both Paul and the record business "checking out".

This is a fantastic documentary that in such a brief period of time conveys the true emotions of someone who is so passionate about their love for records. This sort of passion and genuine emotion is something that I would like to have displayed in our documentary. There is a lot to take away from The Archive, the composition, the heavy use of the subject material (in this case every shot seems to have a record displayed in it), and best of all the choice of music. When to play it and when to stop it, and using it to create the right tone, and shift in tone is imperative.