The response of Exit Through the Gift Shop

This documentary is about a story of how an eccentric French shop owner and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. A very interesting look into the life of street art. The believable aspect of this Mockumentary is very inartificial throughout the whole film, for example, the footages of many street artists that appear in the beginning of the film are quiet practical which are the scene we might truly see about graffiti artists, especially when the police were pursuing and capturing the artists. It’s a very common and realistic phenomenon often happens to them. Another important feature for being believable is the shooting technology, the shaky and jouncy camcorder provides audience a sense of realism, the frames are not stable, complete and clear enough, it was often out of focus, for example when they following shoot the motorcycles or the man was climbing to the top of the house. Although it shows unprofessional, those tricks made the whole film as authentic as the real documentary. Also, the background noises from some scenes are very believable, such as the rumbustious street full with busy vehicles and any daily sounds recorded inadvertently. It added more authenticity and restore some qualities of life. Last of all, the mosaic that put on some interviewees’ faces made the film as serious as a standard documentary.

The most unbelievable aspects for me is the sound effects and the background music that added artificially. It penetrated almost every scene of the film. The music was fairly exaggerated and dramatic like a score of a vintage Mickey Mouse movie. The melody and tempo are kind of humorous and clownish, especially the whistle. It present a atmosphere of inveracious and oriented purposes. Also, although the mosaic is a professional tool for documentary using on interviewees to show respect and privacy, but the format and appearance of mosaic in this film was kind of interesting, it’s different from other documentaries, the mosaic gave me a feeling of unseriousness and fooling. There are some shot cuts, transition, effects and variation were intend to be grandiloquent, dramatic and over reacted, such as the quickly zooming in and rotation of camcorder that used many times in the film.

For me, the entire purpose of Exit Through the Gift Shop was to force the viewer to slow down and really look and think about art. Certain attendance to art have gotten in the way of actually seeing artwork as a statement. Instead, art as monetary value or art as a projection of one’s identity have clouded the meaning of certain works of art. This Mockumentary attempt to show that "authenticity" can be manufactured for sale and asks us to ignore price tags and instead look at the art itself. It’s also similar to Banksy’s point, that the modern art community often values hype over quality.