It is easy to make a documentary solely for the purpose of holding weird people up for ridicule, and very easy in this Age of Irony to find audiences eager to provide it. It's much more difficult, however, to change our minds, to show us a person we thought we were going to make fun of and make us sympathize with him instead. That's what two documentaries at South By Southwest, Winnebago Man and Anvil: The Story of Anvil, do exceptionally well.

Winnebago Man seems, at first glance, to be based on the thinnest of premises: What if we found one of the poor souls whose embarrassing moments have made him a YouTube celebrity and learned more about him? The unwitting celeb in this case is Jack Rebney, whose hilariously profane outtakes from a 1989 Winnebago sales video have been making the rounds for almost 20 years, first on copied VHS tapes and now on YouTube. Here's a compilation, but beware: He swears A LOT.

These outtakes have been watched millions of times by hundreds of thousands of people, but filmmaker Ben Steinbauer got to wondering: Who is this guy? What ever became of him? Does he even know how famous he is?

Winnebago Man chronicles Steinbauer's efforts to find Rebney, and subsequently to get Rebney to consent to having a film made about him. Much of the abundant pleasure of the film comes from taking the journey with Steinbauer, so I won't reveal too much about what he finds. Suffice it to say that Rebney proves fascinating, complex, and hilarious, and that this surprisingly touching film gives him a shot at redemption. Whatever preconceived notions you might have, forget 'em.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil, a hit when it premiered at Sundance in 2008 and finally due in theaters next month, is about a Canadian heavy metal band that's been together for 30 years and recorded a dozen albums, all without gaining anything approaching wide success. Their recent attempts to revive their flagging fanbase, chronicled in the film, give them the appearance of a real-life Spinal Tap, and get this: Their drummer's name is Robb Reiner, just a "B" away from the director of This Is Spinal Tap. You can't make this stuff up, folks, though you'd be forgiven for thinking, at first, that this is a mockumentary about a fictional band, not a straightforward doc about a real group.

Anvil's trials and tribulations (including a manager who barely speaks English and neglects to book any transportation during their European tour) are often funny, but what comes through strongest is the band's dedication to their dream. In that respect, it turns out to be an inspiring and uplifting film. You might not like their style of music -- goodness knows I can't stand it -- and they might not even be that good at writing and performing it. But darned if you don't come out of the film hoping they succeed anyway.

A third compelling documentary at SXSW isn't about people at all, but things. It's Objectified, and it's about industrial design, which most of us don't think much about but which we encounter constantly, every day of our lives. From the alarm clock and toothbrush in the morning to the TV remote and silverware in the evening, almost every object we use was designed at some point to be as useful and appealing as possible.

Gary Hustwit, who a couple years ago made the similarly nerdy-but-fascinating Helvetica (yes, about the font), made Objectified with a similar enthusiasm for often-overlooked details. A lot of attention is paid to the two modern companies most famous for their design aesthetics -- Apple and Ikea -- and Hustwit's talking heads explain why things are shaped the way they are, and how those decisions are reached. As with Jack Rebney and Anvil, you might not think industrial design would be interesting -- so it's a good thing we have talented filmmakers to prove otherwise.

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Eric D. Snider (website), like an Ikea couch, was carefully designed by Swedish craftsmen.

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