Raul Ruiz
http://www.rouge.com.au/2/great.html
The article explores Raul Ruiz, documentary maker who made Great Events and Ordinary People. It goes in to the techniques he uses to make documentaries and how he uses every television news reporter conventions like, shot reverse shot and talking heads to create a sense of fact and realism. These techniques he uses however are used to mock and thus he has subverted conventions to persuade in another context. This results in his films being very funny and hilarious however at the same time, his view point being very subjective, which is a recurrent theme that when reviewing his documentaries.
Plato's Theory of Film
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~jpurcell/Cinema/plato_film.html
The theory touches upon what is truth and what not. And how you can only get a 'likeness of the real form'. It then explains how cinema if by following the theory given by Plato then cinema is not real. It is all just fantasy. This however does not give the fact that for everyone the line between real and not real, right from wrong is different to everyone's view would be different. The fact that people percieve documentaries as being true is a version of a truth that is being represented through someone else's eye. It only gets taken as the truth and not the actual truth. After reading this however I have learnt or have come up with that there is no one truth only that of a version of a truth is being accepted and using this through documentary is a powerful thing. Because cinema is a way of telling a truth that is at the moment dominating society at this present moment in tim. The fact that everyones perception of cinema can be retold and revised in different readings. The article explains how that having actors act out a directors idea is still then a 'likeness' and is not his true image. It is just a copy.
The Media, Poverty and Public Opinion In the UK
The article investigates how the media perceive the subject of poverty in the UK and then sees how this influences public opinion. It goes in to how there isn't enough coverage of poverty in the UK and is hardly ever broadcast or written about unless it is severe or there is a particularly good story about an individual. It then touches upon ethics and how that the media only want to publicize something that will definitely sell and with the system that is what they have at the moment especially with in journalism, it is very hard to get any story in to the news or is deemed as 'newsworthy'.
Ethics and Poverty
An age old question to photojournalism about how journalism exploits people whose standard of living is very much worse off than they are. The article very much depicts journalism as the bad guy in the whole debate. In a way this is true. However arguments for taking pictures of the less fortunate, especially in Africa, that it creates more awareness of the issues that are at the present happening right now. Even if those journalists do mean well they would be helping for the wrong reasons because they would only be changing the immediate and not the long term. It is the same with African photographers as they were also found taking photos of similar subjects as we do in their country. Ownership of the photographs is an issue presented as well saying that the subject in the photo should be entitled to the copyright as well however is not and argues that they also should get a cut from the money the journalist makes, this does happen sometimes on rare occasions, however clearly not enough.
Ethics and Professionalism in Documentary Film Making (chapter 5)
Most do not consider their ethics when making or documenting their subjects. This maybe because one does not have time to reflect on issues regarding ethics especially when in the moment you need to make quick decisions. This leaves the possibility of losing the moment that is key to the documentary. The extract explores issues regarding professionalism and doing what is ethically right. The article explores, knowing something that can make you involved with situations that are unfolding to genuinely help or assist them at the current point in time or to just carry on and keep recording. This much involvement with the subject could not only ruin the documentary but the relationship regarding disagreements that can arise with ethical issues. It also discusses how research is key and that you have to almost be an expert on the subject you are filming otherwise the documentary is going to be poor and your primary source is not going to think you are professional and professionalism/ organisation within the team is also vital in order to get the film complete to a good standard.
Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema
Cinema Verite is where the film maker stages or sets up to document and observe the subject as well as interacts with them to certain levels in order to get footage or the photograph. An example of this would be Martin Parr who does this very well. Whilst Direct Cinema is that of looking upon the subject as if almost the camera is not there to try and capture as much as an objective view as possible. Both ways have flaws like, when do you cross the line to get the truth? This can involve ethical implications however and goes in to the debate of how far would you go e.g. hidden cameras to get the footage or photograph. This has similar characteristics to the observational mode because it seen as 'fly on the wall'. Cinema Verite has the same problem with ethics however regarding the fact that you are not telling enough truth and are distorting it by setting up the subject.
Travis Fox and Video Journalism
In this Travis Fox discusses the future of photojournalism and how the internet is going to be a competitor for cable or the like. It also discusses the role of video journalists in society and in the media today and how they are integrated in companies such as newsrooms, which they are heavily involved with traditional news reporters. This is because of the whole way they which report has similar ways to which video journalists do things. However are completely different in the way the style by which they tell a story sometimes.
The Ins and Outs of Video Journalism
http://www.mrdot.co.uk/videojournalism_today.html
It talks about how videojournalism is now such a key and integral part of news that it is what people want due to the fact that youtube being video based. It discusses more importantly however that it is taking over television and is how people want they re news now. It describes it as a 'revolution' how it is taking the whole Web 2.0 theory to another level by getting users to be more involved, getting what the people want and the development of the journalism. This can put into hindsight what negative effects would this have on other mediums such as television or newspapers and how long would it take for televison to either catch up with society or for its audience to slowly decrease and burnout.
The Rise of The Independant Video Journalist
The rise of new ideas and concepts in society at the moment with the rise of video/photo journalism. With in the recent economic climate, the whole idea is looking more and more appealing to news corporations which need to be cutting costs due to its loss in advertising and its readers going to the internet. It opens the whole idea to being your own editor and choosing what YOU want people to think. The whole postmodern idea is that all opinions are equal and are as interesting as each other so none have to be chosen over others like it is in newspapers. The mediums we use today to watch news are out of date and the emergence of Video Photojournalism has provided a way that gives the people what people need making watching the television for news updates etc are a thing of the past that cannot beat the USP of the internet due to the fact that it allows the user to choose what to think and has such a wide variety of news that it also allows the whole postmodernist point of view to flourish and people are much better off with that.
Video Journalists Is Old News
The opposing view of how video journalism is nothing new but is only shoved on to another platform is one that has a point however. By putting it on to another platform the content changes to suit the platform. It is not the idea of video being new. It is the way it is being reported and told. I disagree with this view hence my reason. Since this article so much has developed and his survey he conducted is no longer relevant now because it is 5 years old and the internet has developed a lot since then. I think he had a point for that time period in 2007 but now his argument is not very relevant to the now more experienced video journalists that now have refined all of the things that they did badly.
Infotainment and the Degeneration of News
It discusses how news has developed in to a more entertainment sector of the industry. This is because of the way that companies compete for viewers and so have to make it more interesting for the viewer by creating a mimic of a news report with a bit of fact thrown in as well. This is quite worrying because as the competition gets fiercer due to the internet taking all of television's audience to get their news. Reports will slowly deteriorate to hardly being news programmes at all and not provide us with any real news (facts, evidence etc). This is reinforcing that in society cannot handle hard news and we would all be going around in our own little world when something really bad and horrible is happening else where that has the potential to effect you in someway or another is totally ignored or not fully understood which is already starting to happen now.
Documentaries and the the Digital Age
The wider issue of the importance of the topics represented in documentary and how documentary can do is that it can open and explore topics rather than be absolutely certain about a subject. This is helped by using the internet to distribute documentary in a new way. However arguments against this is that it shows limitations in what is shown like 'visual evidence' of the representation of drama.
The way by which the digital age has effected news reports and live events have merged and is especially the case with BBC News 24 where they use a mixture of sound, image and voice in such a way that it creates an odd montage of news events that can confuse and complicate the message that they are giving across which is also heightened by it giving the effect that it appears to be in a non-linear narrative. The article discusses the digital effects it has on real news. The digitisation of documentary has also effected the way by which he expository mode has is filmed. This is because it has opened the amount of ways in which they are filmed. With the amount of different tools and ways to record, footage can be distributed in many more ways and thanks to the internet, a much larger audience. The accessibility of the internet allows people to access information and views of so many different news reports people can now make their own judgement about what actually is the truth. However this can also have a negative effect for others as this can also confuse people as well as enlighten due to the multitude of different news reports.
The use of globalisation and how organisations like Google can manipulate information you see can have massive effects on how your view can be changed. This is because of the presumptions Google uses to get the results for you differ from what your previous history is and orders results accordingly.
Because of the digital age that we are in documentary is combined with so many more modes than there were before its existence due the audience and how much broader it is because of the web. Documentary also has linear, but at the same time conventions of non-linear practice, which allows the end product to be something of an indivdualistic documentary every time a documentary is made because of the increasing use of so many modes along with the post modernist view which makes every documentary have a different approach to that certain directors intentions.
Representation of the International News
How it can determine countries views on other countries can cause racism and sterotypes. Western world influences the flow of the news but also what goes into that flow as well. Yugoslav is one country whose news was that of quite a good standard in terms of how it represented other countries. This was mainly due to its diverse and wide variety of the differing nations that populated its lands. However their own news about itself was not to the same standard due to the fact that there was no main body to maintain the standard like in Western Society.
Delo conducted a sample that would gather international news of a certain time frame and see where the news came from, one was taken in the 1980s with results that the third world reported a mere 10% however at the same time being the subject matter of other international news of about 45% most being positive. Compared with the data sample taken in 2004-6 the positive news dropped significantly. Nearly 80% of all international news was negative. This gives the impression with referencing to the article above about the entertaining part of news reports being more dominant it asks the question weather we as an audience do not care about positive news because we have got so de-sensitised by the gradual and increasing amount of news that is negative all news stations can do now is report on negative stories to keep ratings high.
The abstract photograph has also became more prominant in todays society using symbols and objects to represent a subject that is related or the editor wants to relate with the article in question. This is especially done in the 3rd world where candidates for example depict themselves with violence.
Digital Raw Capturing
RAW and the capturing data when you take a photo involves the camera recording all the metadata about that certain image taken at that time. Which includes light etc. An SLR camera like the Cannon 450d has thousands of censor arrays which record each individual pixel which is recorded through the use of photons.
By using all the meta data a grey scale can be made that involves 3 or maybe 4 colours that get processed and are separated in to the different shades for grey scale and then put over the top of each other for a complete image.
Whilst JPEG only allows a small amount of change when you want to edit the image later. The main reason is that its colour rendition is far smaller than that of a RAW file and because of this if you shoot in JPEG you will have to get everything correct when shooting. RAW on the other can offer you a large amount of manipulation to the sharpening, colour, white balance, aperture, hue etc which makes it far superior to the JPEG format.
Autobiographical Journey in Documentaries
The importance of a person getting from A to B. The source, path and goal route. It is something that as humans people adhere to aspirations and to know what and why others have theirs. Thats what can make a documentary so interesting because people look at such programmes for a need. That need can be love, or family, social activity. People can get inspiration from such images and thus sate a need. One of the important things to remember though is that there is a balance between the source, path and goal.
Sherman's March is one such documentary which executes quest, journey and story very well. By having a quest and a sub quest at the same time when one is not happening the other is. Keeping in motion the journey he is making in order to make his own journey. The unity of all three attributes results in 'rich multi layered representations, thus adding to narrative integrity,' this means that the images the audiences see are visual cues to subconsious of consious pre conceived ideas of something linking to something else in the documentary. Like Winter representing death.
Real Documentary
The investigation by Bill Nickols is an intriguing analyisis in to what makes and creates a documentary that is actually a real documentary. Nickols states that it is not one of those that people see on the television that is more of a story about a terminally ill child or ones that involve the audience and making them think they themselves can help those who are in the 'documentary'. He questions the integrity of those that in society that call documentaries, documentaries because many that people see don't actually know how to define a documentary or those that do don't really know what they are talking about. He also suggests that the consumable 'docuenaries' we watch at the moment are those that makes us feel better about our own situation and are those to comfort our selves. A documentary is an education of the mind which he claims is the '6th sense' which needs refining and exercised in order to develop it just like your other senses. Real documentary does this and tell the truth. Not a story. It is something that many audiences cannot handle because it is not 'sexy' enough which basically means it has to be stimulating enough for broadcasting houses to think that it will be able to appeal to the mass market and make money. This process has made people in society think that documentary is that of a story and has lost sight of what actually is a real documentary whilst they are actually watching a hybrid of the genre documentary and something else.
Reality Bites
In this reading it talks about how and ultimatley why the genre of docuemtnary has been led down this 'dumbing down' as critics have called it. One main reason would be the gradual competition for advertisers to advertise on their channels. Thus getting more money. The reason behind this can be many reasons however I think the greater variety of channels that have been growing in number of the recent years has resulted in more competition when it comes down to getting advertisers and because they have not scaled down in size to compensate for this they have competed for more viewers by getting more entertaining, more watchable material for audiences to view and thus get the ratings to which advertisers are attracted to.
Honest Truths (Ethics)
The understanding of ethics in documentary and film makers is absolute in everything they do. It is something that upholds the documentary maker and is constrained to them at the same time. Always questioning them throughout the whole creation process. Ethics are something that documentary film makers fear and can make or break a film in order to get a piece of footage they dearly need to make it. How far do they go to get the truth? The decision making process is imperative for the film maker is a crucial part in how the filming should go and as a result may not agree with his decision however ethically he would be sound. The idea of telling the truth is one that is in the mind of every documentary film maker but it can either be the diminish of his career or (depending on how he does it) the best attribute he will ever have.
Aesthetics and Realism
http://learn.winchester.ac.uk/file.php/1179/week_8_09/Aesthetics_of_realism.pdf
There is a very broad debate regarding the what is and how it is when it comes to the merging of two different genres of film. In the case of documentary there has always been someone who wants to mix and play around with the conventions of drama and vice versa. It is then theorised that because of the new digital age, with cameras that are cheaper and smaller than the cumbersome 35mm cameras that has encouraged an almost kind of boom in the hybrid genre terms of documentary. Blaire Witch Project being one such mock-umentary that dabbles with the conventions of documentary (in this case the almost now cliché of the shaky handy cam). As a result, the audience makes the thought process, what they react the same as when they see a documentary however have to think as well that this is actually something else to make them think that it is not really real. The fact that the genre of drama (as an example) try and create a truth in order to make a story to which they audience thinks its at least reasonbly beleiveable is the closest it is ever going to get to the actual truth that documentary gives. However when making drama the fact that it has conventions of documentary can play on an audiences emotions in a different way that makes it more engaging to them.
