In ‘September Mourning’ the most of the footage is hand held and sometimes on tripod. The intro to ‘September Mourning’ is just a view of the New York skyline and it shows emptiness in the sky line. Throughout the documentary many different angles of the skyline are shown, they are also shown at different times of the day. On some of the views of the skyline Roger Graef has added extra tints to the sky. On the first image shown the sky seems to be a very midnight blue colour, it doesn’t seem to be natural. ‘September Mourning’ could be classified as an observational documentary because during the whole of the documentary there is no music at all except a ‘city sound’ of traffic. This seems to be threatening. In 9/11 there is a piano piece being played. The title is shown in the same way as in 9/11 but it is shown at the bottom of the screen. Also, in ‘September Mourning’ you don’t see Roger Graef at all but in 9/11 you see the Naudet brothers a bit. In 9/11 there are interviews of other fire fighters and interviews of the Naudet brothers. There are also voice-overs of other fire fighters. In ‘September Mourning’ the voice-overs are only ever the interviewees.
‘9/11’ almost turns into an entertainment program and you seem to get involved with it, it was not intrusive. Whereas ‘September Mourning’ seemed to many people as to being intrusive and that when the relatives of the victims get emotional then Roger Graef zooms in, this is very intrusive. Many people also think that there was no need for the music in ‘9/11’ and that the music seems to be computerised. Some people also think that ‘September Mourning’ was unwatchable because it was so moving and it was so full of tragedy. ‘9/11’ was ‘watered’ down and it wasn’t intrusive but it made the point and was ‘designed to be sold’ because 21st Century Fox put their money into it and it wants it’s money back.
‘9/11’ also had one of the Naudet brothers in one of the towers and because of the debris going everywhere that he had to keep on cleaning his lense. Usually parts like that a filmmaker would cut out but because this issue was so real that they left it in. Also, ‘9/11’ uses slow motion in parts but ‘September Mourning’ doesn’t. in ‘9/11’ there are interviews with the other fire-fighters and this is done in the style of ‘999’, this probably done because ‘999’ is about real-life tragedies and how people have survived them. And this is what the fire fighters had been through.
Because ‘9/11’ was American made that it seemed to repeat things like the seen when one of the brothers hid behind a van because the tower fell. This seems to be played over and over again. Near the end of ‘9/11’ there is a dedication to all of the victims and this dissolves up, this is written in black colour and in capital letters. This is done to show how disastrous the attack was. After that there are still images of the fire fighters that died in the attack, these are shown in sets of 4, the photos are laid on a fire fighters uniform and this dissolves to more and more photos. The sound track on this part is, ‘The Land Of The Free’. This sequence goes on for a long time; this shows you how serious and how many casualties there were in the incident. During the interviews with the fire fighters some of them can’t believe what had happened and one of them tries to see the good side of it, that was when in the tower that collapsed that no one when back to the post because the tower had collapsed. When everyone had made it back safely to the firehouse then everyone was very emotional and the Naudet brothers hugged eachother and kiss. But when the fire fighters came back they didn’t do that because the French are very free with eachother.
In ‘September Mourning’ Roger Graef stays with the relatives of the victims and make them open up to the camera. In one way or another each victim of the attacks was British. Roger Graef talks with 4 relatives of the victims. One of the victims is ‘Rick Rescorla’ he died while saving other peoples lives. Because he was originally from Cornwall that from the place he was from he is celebrated as a hero. There is another victim and he was called ‘Godwin Forde’ he saved lives in the tower but he is not celebrated as a hero because he was a security guard and that was his job. Roger seems to use a lot of natural surroundings, in a shot in a car he has a shot of trees without leaves. This almost shows confusion, in another shot he has Rick Rescorla’s wife in at a cemetery and he has a shot of her in between 2 trees, this makes it looks like she is trapped and has no way to go. In another shot of the New York skyline it is behind a gate, this shows that the city of New York is under threat and that it can’t get away from what happened. Another victim of the attack is ‘Simon Turner’ he went for a business trip to New York for 4 days and he died. He left a 7 month pregnant wife.
In another shot of the New York skyline there is the Brooklyn bridge and this shows that New York is not alone and that it has a lot of people from different places supporting it. In ‘September Mourning’ Roger Graef only has the relatives talking and he just films this, he doesn’t talk in it. He probably does this to show people that the relatives were affected and they should be able to talk instead of him.
