A Documentary in Review: Straight Outta L.A.

Intro and Overall Idea:
What do the former L.A. Raiders and hip-hop music have in common? Take these two things and add in appearances from Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Al Davis...now mix it all together and we end up with the documentary, Straight Outta L.A. This film was one of 30 documentaries shot by Hollywood film makers for ESPN, Ice Cube being one of the more recognizable celebrities on the list.

The film begins with the film's creator, Ice Cube, narrating an anecdote from his childhood of the Raiders. During the narration, the shots bounce between popular players at the time and the city of Los Angeles. Immediately the viewer can tell that Ice Cube has what the kids are calling "swag" these days, in other words, prepare yourself to see some real style and an exclusive point of view on the documentary topic coming from Mr. Cube himself. This point of view is passionate and emotional at points, especially when Ice Cube speaks of the LA riots. This section of the documentary becomes the climax of the film, demonstrating the spiral that LA had taken. Ice Cube pairs this chaos of LA side-by-side with the decision of the Raiders to leave the city and return to Oakland again.

In terms of subject matter, at first I was unsure of how the Raiders and NWA or football and hip-hop were connected. I feel like the documentary may have taken too long to do a segment on how football relates to hip-hop and the musical part was introduced much later into the film. At the same time, it is understandable to see why this happened, as the film was chronological, defined by the events occurring in Ice Cube's life.

Effects and Shooting Style:
The style of this documentary is very modern, clean, and still manages to stay a little edgy. The interviews taken were almost all shot in a brightly lit, white space, allowing the viewer to focus solely on the interviewee. The shots of the interviews were nice, with great depth, shadow and contrast of the subjects. There was a good mix between close-up shots to show emotion, and comfortably off-center angled shots. The cameramen took the opportunity to film some nice details, one of my favourite shots in the interviews was a close-up on Al Davis's NFL bracelet. These kind of detail shots during an interview are a newer technique, but I quite liked the use of it in this documentary.

The shots of Ice Cube were almost all moving shots, most with Snoop Dogg present in a conversation-style interview. This was my least favourite part of the documentary, I think Ice Cube's questions were phrased so that Snoop Dogg could only answer in agreement with Ice Cube...which is boring and predictable for the viewer. It also felt like an awkward set-up, with them playing a game of catch with a football in the empty stadium (I'm assuming the former Raiders stadium?). These segments seemed mostly useless, Ice Cube's commentary was present enough in the film because he narrated the entire film.

Keeping with the theme of negativity, the interview sections of Al Davis were...terrible. While Davis may have had great things to say, he was just unattractively lit, and a little creepy to look at. This was the only interview that wasn't brightly lit with a white background, instead Ice Cube chose a dark blue-gray backdrop for the interview. This only added to the creepy effect the interview had. I think that Al Davis had a lot to say, but it would have been more comfortable to watch b-roll footage with his voice narrating over-top of it. I wouldn't have minded short cuts to Davis himself to show emotion and to keep the viewer interested, but I found the constant, poorly lit shots of Davis to be both boring and unsettling.

The treatments used on the b-roll footage and stills were definitely modern. Most of the still photos were converted from 2D to 3D, this was an effect I haven't seen used very much. Some of the b-roll footage was actually an animation of Ice Cube's childhood and career, providing some comic relief. I have seen this technique used in other documentary films such as Michael Moore's popular film, Bowling for Columbine. The animation itself was simple, black and white drawings with characters that were overly expressive. I enjoyed these animated parts because I think they helped to transition from one point in Ice Cube's story to another with a short and comical narration instead of a long explanation. In all honesty, I found the animations to be charming.


Music and Audio:
Of course Ice Cube takes the opportunity to demonstrate his taste in hip-hop music, providing appropriately upbeat tracks to both transitions and b-roll footage between segments. Obviously NWA's music is featured more than once, as is their style. Narration is one of the most important aspects of this film, and I feel that the script provided to Ice Cube was well written. Ice Cube has a good amount of emotion and high-low rise in his voice to keep the viewers interested. There is nothing worse than a monotone speaker, so it's a plus that Ice Cube is able to be expressive off-camera with his voice as well.

Emotion and Conflict:
Throughout the film, there was a gradual rise as the Raiders move to LA and begin to win. But with every up, there's always a down. The writers did a great job here providing a high-low feeling to the story of the Raiders. Going into the powerful, dark climax of the documentary, Ice Cube brings up a heavy topic: the LA drug trade. This transition and relation to the Raiders was powerful and when it was coupled with darker b-roll footage and stills. Not only was this transition from light to dark done well, but it was properly synced with some more intense rap/hip-hop music, it caused the viewer to feel unsettled. Ice Cube's demeanor behind the camera became serious as he narrated the LA Riots. I felt that this was the most emotional and powerful part of the film. Usually documentaries build up, but they do not have such a huge rise and fall like Straight Outta LA did. I thought it was unique!

Resolution:
I found the resolution of this documentary to kind of leave the viewer wanting to ask questions and follow football. After reading that this documentary was a part of a project by ESPN, it makes sense that they would want to leave interest with the viewer about football. ESPN, being a popular sports network, wouldn't mind a few extra viewers during the NFL season I'm sure.

Another thing I was left wondering after the documentary was, how did Ice Cube really feel about Al Davis? He appeared to be a fan of Davis throughout the film, but then attacked him in a couple parts, I wasn't sure what Ice Cube's final thoughts on Davis were. I would have been interested to know if Ice Cube though that Al Davis was greedy, or a man just doing what was best for his team?