Analysis of a Documentary: Foo Fighters: Back & Forth

Foo Fighters: Back & Forth
Director: James Moll 

Back and Forth is a 2011 documentary released by Foo Fighters, directed by filmmaker James Moll. The film documents the band's 16 year history, from the band's very first songs created as cassette demos Dave Grohl recorded during his tenure as Nirvana's drummer, through its ascent to their Grammy-winning, multi-platinum, arena and stadium headlining status as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. Produced by Nigel Sinclair (No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Amazing Journey the Story of the Who, The Last Play at Shea) of Exclusive Media Group's Spitfire Pictures, and produced and directed by James Moll, ‘FOO FIGHTERS BACK AND FORTH’ culminates with the making of the band's new album Wasting Light: a process in which the band pushed itself forward by going fully back to basics and recording in Grohl's garage completely on analog tape. No computers, no software - just a band recording an album to tape in a garage. The new record also marks the Foos' first full-length effort with legendary producer Butch Vig, with whom Grohl worked on Nirvana's classic album Nevermind. The documentary also gets its title from a track on the Foo Fighters' seventh studio album ‘Wasting Light’.

Back and Forth saw its debut on March 15, 2011 at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. The first session was followed by a surprise Foo Fighters live performance, which included the entirety of Wasting Light in its setlist. The documentary received a very welcoming reception with it eventually winning a Grammy Award in the Best Long Form Music Video category in the 2012 Grammy Awards. The documentary was also broadcasted international in cinema releases and then tv broadcast’s of it as well, with it show casing in the UK on BBC2 on 3^rd June 2011. On IMDb it got a rating of 8.3; later a full version was put on YouTube which has a viewer rating standing at 41, 291 currently.  

This documentary is a hybrid to the different genres documentaries have. It is an autobiographical documentary as it tells all the tales of the bands history and is produced by the band itself but its also a ‘making of’ film due to it also being about the making of their seventh studio album ‘wasting lights’ and can also be seen to be a concert or rock festival documentary in some parts as the film heavily features footage from concerts and festival, superficially looking at their Wembley stadium concert in 2008.

The target audience for this documentary would undoubtedly be Foo Fighters fans and fans of rock music, as Foo Fighters are on the world’s greatest rock bands. Their fans span from such a wide variety of people due for them being about for 17 years meaning they have young teenage fans to fans that are middle aged and even older. 

The film includes material taken from over 1,000 hours of historical and new footage, and interviews with the current members of Foo Fighters, former band members William Goldsmith and Franz Stahl; producer Butch Vig and current members of the band. Frontman Dave Grohl has said the main inspiration for the film was the decision to record Wasting Light in the garage of his mansion in Encino, California. 

The documentary opens with a montage of images of the band members growing up with the opening credits placed with them, incidental music of famous rock bands play throughout to show music that inspired them whilst growing up, archive footage is also used in the title sequence and eventually ends with the actual title of the documentary and the bands logo. 

The whole documentary consists of interviews of past and current band members along with the producer of the new record Butch Vig, all the interview shots are framed using either medium shots or close ups. Archive footage is heavily used throughout in the forms of homemade videos e.g in early days when they were on tour; news coverage items e.g Kurt Cobains death; photos; recording of their gigs; award ceremony receptions etc. Captions are also used throughout to introduce who the people were and when & where the archive footage is from. The use of interviews, archive footage and captions are all conventions of documentaries. During the filming of the actual making of the 'Wasting Light' album a handheld camera is mainly used to follow the band around Grohls house in his garage studio to the band's families playing in the swimming pool. 

The editing of this film is mainly uses fades, this is because fades worked well to show the passing of time and it worked well with the pace of the documentary as a whole with was calm and collected as it is a reminiscence of the past for them. Seamless cuts were also just for the smooth pace.

Incidental music was used throughout mainly of music from their new album which the documentary promotes. However other bands music was used as well.