Analyse af dokumentaren 'Born to be a Cowboy'

The documentary “Born to be a Cowboy” is about Pecos Tatum, a 10-year-old boy from Texas, who wants nothing more than to become a professional cowboy. In the documentary you follow how hard he works every day and the way that his parents support him. This essay will have focus on how the film-makers use the editing, sound and the shot types, and in what way it affects the documentary.

In the documentary there are many different types of editing. In many of the scenes where Pecus is swinging his lasso they use the slow-motion effect to show how concentrated and focused he is. For example between 03:00 and 03:07 he is practicing with his father, where he is throwing his lasso against a practice dummy. In one of the rodeos a camera is put on his head or a kind of hand held camera between 13:55 and 14:05 while he is riding a bull. This makes the bull riding more intense and exciting, you can tell that because they also use short takes and fast paced editing to give it more action. In the beginning of the documentary between 02:15 and 2:25 they use montage editing by piecing together different images of older family members, also dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, to give the feeling of how important being a cowboy is to the family. And how serious they are about what they call a “lifestyle”.