For my documentary, I watched Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. I watched the first episode which is titled ”Handsome Devil” and is fifty-three minutes long. The documentary is based off of two journalists who try to capture the real story of Ted Bundy.  The deal was a story for reexamination of all the cases and evidence against him. The journalists were Stephen Michaud, who conducted the interviews with Bundy, and Hugh Aynesworth, who traveled to the east coast to look at all the cases Bundy was involved in. The film starts off the first couple of minutes with statements from people who knew Ted Bundy. People like his family, friends, and even love interests say a quick think about him. It then shows live footage from various crime sprees that go on in the era. It shows Charles Manson being arrested and a picture of John Wayne Gacy. The opening sets up the documentary by showing the dangerous times, and the fact that serial killer wasn’t even a term people know about yet. The interviews then start with a little small talk where we learn a piece of interesting info. Both Michaud and Bundy were born in Burlington VT and moved to the same town in Washington with their moms where they knew some of the same people. The interviews don’t get much out of Bundy in this episode. While the documentary shows some stuff about the crimes, Bundy doesn’t give any real information about the murders, he just wants to talk about his life. It’s not until the end if the episode that Michaud gets him to start to open up by convincing him to talk about the kind of person who would commit these crimes in third person. This is because this kind of talking can’t be evidence in court.

    There are interesting decisions made by the editor with the b roll and the structure of the film. The first thing I noticed is how all of the different things brought up follow a timeline that jumps forward and backward from where it starts, you see it everything there’s a date change like in the shot at 20:21. The b roll as expected is a lot of old footage and pictures. Old newspapers like at 13:06 and old news footage like at 11:38 makeup small parts of the film. This was just the b roll that I liked the best. They even had a video of the search party looking for victims at 32:54. The decision to have a woman being interviewed and Ted Bundy recordings that contradict each other rotate back in forth was genius. It’s like they were arguing. The pictures of the victims that appear throughout the documentary are also interesting in the way that they’re all really similar, like a headshot of the girl smiling. One of my favorite parts was the montage at the end of the film. While Ted is talking and getting darker and darker the montage is getting faster and faster and darker and darker too. As expected, the lighting and shadows look really good and the interviews switch between different places on the screen. It would be super boring if they were all on one side or in the center.

    I would definitely recommend this documentary to people that are always out of elementary school. I don’t think really young people should see something as dark as this, but it’s a really interesting and informative film for anyone who’s interested in Ted Bundy or serial killers in general. I’ve always been interested with serial killers and crime in general so this was the perfect documentary and I would definitely recommend it.