Justin Joseph Hall: Wasp, Rock & a Hard Place

Episode #17 - Justin Joseph Hall our owner from Minnesota has been working hard in post-production at DCTV this year. For this episode that was recorded on his birthday he decided to share how vérité documentaries can be made and aspects of using documentary style camera work can be used in narrative filmmaking.

Justin started with Andrea Arnold’s famous short film Wasp. It is entirely shot in handheld form with little or no music. It follows a family in real time evoking well-known vérité cinema techniques brought forth to documentary filmmaking by folks like the Maysles brothers in the 1960’s and beyond. It is a short intense drama about family responsibilities colliding with personal freedoms.

The feature Justin brought forth was Downtown Community Television’s Rock and a Hard Place that they made for HBO Documentaries in conjunction with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The film is a vérité documentary by the legendary modern vérité directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill and was the first documentary Justin Joseph Hall had worked on with DCTV. He began as an assistant editor and many of the montages in the film for editor David Meneses.

To learn more about Justin’s work in conjunction with DCTV, please check out FRONTLINE: Life on Parole and the new series Axios on HBO.

Episode hosted by Daria Huxley.

Justin Joseph Hall - Assistant Editor

Justin Joseph Hall - Assistant Editor

Host - Daria Huxley

Sound Mix & Additional Music - Brian Trahan

Theme song of Season 4 is Johnny's Tune In Waltz by Salitros’ Ridin’ Rainbow.