DJ’s of Oman Documentary Analysis

DJ’s of Oman is a documentary surrounding party life and the DJ’s behind it. The director Elma Mola began off with a series of aerial shots that wonderfully brought the audience into her world. 

After the establishing shots, Mola incorporates modern day hip hop as a non-diegetic sound, once again captivating its audience as it relates to the trends of this day. 

Throughout the party scenes of the documentary, Mola did a wonderful job of capturing the crowd and their movements. All these scenes were delivered clearly and gave the viewers a chance to feel the crowd's real moment emotions giving them a closer connection to the story itself. With such raw footage, I am left wondering what techniques Mola used to take these scenes. 

Mola also did an excellent job with the contrast of the night party scenes versus the daylight scenes mostly used in interviews. This contrast helped create the environment of the entire process of a party, from the set up of the day till the end of the night. 

The interviews themselves were a bit confusing to understand their structure. Mola begins each interview with a black and white still pause before continuing to the interview. While this is no doubt a stylistic choice, my question is what is its purpose ? I personally would also prefer the interviews to be taken in different locations rather than just a single angle in one location. Mola did this for the first three interviews before the fourth which occurred in a room. 

On the positive side, the interviews coordinated by Mola did offer different perspectives. The first three went into depth of what it was like to be a DJ and the fourth went deeper behind the scenes explaining how it all works. By taking the viewer outside of the box, the audience was kept engaged and wondering how the entire production set for DJ’s is set up and how it all works. 

The documentary as a whole revolved around an engaging story to modern day life that incorporated beautifully captured shots to set the scene of the location and the feeling gave off.