Trust your instincts.
No matter how much planning you have done, be prepared to follow a strong gut reaction, whether to a topic, person, technique or moment. Western, and particularly patriarchal society tends to disregard intuition in favour of the planned, scheduled and logical. If you tune in to your intuition and learn to trust it, you will not be disappointed. Whether the results end up in the current project or not, instinct will steer your towards something you need to investigate or understand. We know more about what we’re doing and what is essential than what is always consciously recognized.
Choose subjects and stories you care about, or have a personal connection to.
It’s hard, if not impossible, to make others care if you don’t. Within the deluge of media and images that confront us everyday, it is a challenge to awaken indignation or empathy, let alone a call to action or intervention.
Susan Sontag, in “Regarding the Pain of Others”, says (p111) “Citizens of modernity, consumers of violence as spectacle, adepts of proximity without risk are schooled to be cynical about the possibility of sincerity. Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved.”
But she also says (p114) that “it seems good to acknowledge, to have enlarged, one’s sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others.”
Even though the public today may be jaded and desensitized to images of suffering, you never know what might suddenly pierce this armour. Making work about disturbing issues, putting unjust realities repeatedly in front of the public, speaks to our sense of hope and desire for things to improve, for the best in or humanity to rise above the worst in it.
Research.
Use multiple sources and perspectives to get a bigger picture. If the story involves one individual, what are the larger contexts or concerns that might inform it? Consider how many voices are necessary to achieve authenticity in regards to piecing together and portraying historical events. Are you striving for authenticity, or for reflexivity regarding the construction of truth in documentary practice? Be cautious and conscious of a too narrow view from the outset.
In “Mapping the Disaster: Walid Ra’ad’s The Atlas Group Project and The Lebanese Civil War”, Deborah Root notes Ra’ad’s use of “underlining the fluid nature of authorship and revealing how conventions of recording events and histories necessarily seek to tidy up complex historical material . . .“ including that “the instability of history . . . reminds us that complex events cannot be systematized.” as galleries attempt to do when ordering the sequence and flow through an exhibition.
She also notes that Ra’ad insists on rumour’s place within history, which suggests a disembodied voice with societal credibility, and his assertion that “the truth remains messy, inherently disruptive, and best approached as a disordered labyrinth.”
All of this suggests more research to me, as well as the potential for experimenting with non-linear progression through the work. Even if it doesn’t all directly come into play within the final work, research, whether about the individual or the larger topics, will give you a broader understanding to bring to the project and to telling the story. It may also suggest a bigger or different story than you originally thought you were telling.
Eye, Mind, Heart.
Engage all three, both your own and the viewers’, to make really great work.
Eye: Images, whether moving or still, are first and foremost visual. Quality of light, framing, sense of motion, layering, details, blurs, visual rhythms, collage, montage, from the enigmatic and difficult to identify to straight, sharply focused scenes – are all tools for creating and maintaining visual interest and expressing ideas. Delight, intrigue, surprise, lull or rivet the eye.
This does not make the visuals an end unto themselves. They should never be so expressive that they challenge the authenticity of the story or feel out of place.
As Blake Fitzpatrick said, “The more crude and less beautiful or aesthetic a film, the more believable it is as a truthful film.” This can also lead to the use of visually crude imaging techniques, such as shaky camera, poor focus and lighting, awkward camera angles, and long, unedited takes as the visual means of simulating authenticity.
Mind: Leave us something to think about. Documentary is not Hollywood!
Neat endings may occur naturally, but it’s OK, and even desirable, to leave questions in the air. A documentary film that leaves nothing to think about is likely not as meaningful as one that leaves questions or ideas playing in the minds of its viewers after it’s over. Closure need not be conclusive. A good story is key.
Also important is to consider the context within which an image or film is viewed. Context conveys a type of understanding or genre that will impact the meaning, reading and audience of the work. A gallery setting imbues different implications, to quite a different public, than a newspaper.
Charles Wolfe addresses this in “Direct Address and the Social Documentary Photograph: “Annie May Gudger” as Negative Subject.” He says, “To look at a photograph in a family album, or on the front page of a newspaper, or on the wall of a museum gallery is in each instance to see it differently. A social documentary photograph, moreover, takes on its status as such precisely because familiar categories are available to invest it with meaning.” He goes on to discuss how an image’s relationship to sequencing and text also affect its reception and interpretation. Context may work subliminally, but is critical.
Heart: Stella Bruzzi references the narrator of “Sunless” talking about “The Pillow Book” and its list of “things that quicken the heart”. Bruzzi says such things are personal, idiosyncratic and ephemeral. She notes that what is on today’s list may not be on tomorrow’s, suggesting the indefinite nature of experience. This list makes us wonder about our own list, and what moves us.
If you can move us, or provoke us, you have succeeded in the first step towards initiating change, or at least understanding, no matter how jaded we may be.
This idea, this imperative to move the viewer, is also related to Roland Barthe’s elusive “punctum”, as presented it in “Camera Lucida”. By his definition, the object that “pricks us”, that is poignant, is both unpredictable and particularly personal. Yet it is the notion of this additional element that we add to what already exists in an image or a film that adds its weight of meaning and memorability. It is this kind of connection that is crucial to your work making a difference.
Experiment.
Learn “the rules” and then feel free to break them. Or perhaps un-learn the rules would be more to the point. We are burdened with established tropes and conventions.
Any media, medium or technique goes if the story is meaningful, the personalities engaging, or if the issues raised are compelling. Photographs, film, the web, animation, stills, Super8, Hi8, HD are all fine if they advance the story, our understanding, viewpoint, perspective or the characters. HD is nothing without these.
The unexpected and even the seemingly irrational might be gold. Be alert and open to viable changes, spontaneous diversions or unplanned events that may not be what you originally set out to get. They may reveal more than you anticipated. The unscripted and unplanned are at the heart of the documentary tradition. Keep shooting.
Narrative, poetics, humour and beauty all have a place in documentary.
While achieving a sense of authenticity is inherent in the documentary mode, there are many means to this end. Documentary need not be synonymous with dull. If beauty, narrative, humour and the poetic lend greater understanding or meaning, and are natural to the subject, then use them. Beauty is not a dirty word.
Susan Sontag says (p89) that “narratives can help us understand” while “ photographs do something else: they haunt us.” Depending on your goals, all of these are tools for communication.
Sound is at least half of a film.
Often underestimated, audio works more subliminally than video, and can affect us deeply. Whether acquired while filming or added in post-production, sound conveys a richness of experience, dimensional depth, and emotional responses that are as important, and can be more persuasive, than images.
Truth and meaning are subjective and therefore variable. Integrity is not.
Treat your subjects with respect whether you agree with them and their politics or not. Ethical behaviour has responsibilities.
Let characters reveal themselves rather than speaking for them, whenever possible. This enables the subjective embodiment of their own truths to come forward. Specificity is more potent than generalizations. How you deal with this afterwards is where your own integrity, and assessment of how and what to present, comes into play.
Linda Alcoff notes in “The Problem of Speaking for Others”, that this practice (of speaking for others) “is often, though not always, erasure and a reinscription of sexual, national, and other kinds of hierarchies.” Though she adds that “sometimes, as Loyce Stewart has argued, we need a messenger to advocate for our needs.”
In his article “Knowledge, Power and the Body”, Bill Nichols discusses how documentary authenticity has come into question today, as well as some strategies to maintain it. The truth of any event may be perceived differently by different people and at different times. He says that what actually happened eventually gives way to what we think happened. These thoughts are then coloured by social attitudes, the media and historical perspectives, including the original intention or voice of archival footage. Although historical material tends to be perceived as truthful because it is old, it may also be strongly framed by mandates or meanings that are no longer valid or appropriate. Integrity may involve re-working archival materials to change the focus of their attention, or the parameters through which they are viewed.
In the same article Nichols refers to the Rodney King beating video when he notes, “the malleability of footage that may document what happened on one level but not guarantee its meaning on another.”
Recognizing that meaning can only be shaped and guided but not guaranteed also speaks to the personal integrity of the filmmaker. It may be a necessary part of contemporary documentary practice to be aware of the variability of interpretations and challenges to authenticity, and to consider whether, and to what degree, to address them in your work. Presenting ideas, situations or events while leaving their final interpretation open may be one approach. Letting the uniquely specific, embodied experience refer to the general by implication is another. Considerations in presenting or representing knowledge with both authenticity and ethical integrity may result in the further evolution of documentary style, experimentation and methods.
Beware of effects for effects’ sake.
Cross dissolves are good – long ones may be better.
Almost any other transitional effect is cliché and trying too hard, most of the time.
Effects should advance or enhance intent. Special effects and techniques of craft should never overpower or distract from the story being told.
Manifestos are meaningless.
Manifestos are for historians (should your name and convictions survive the test of time).
The viewer doesn’t care. It’s all about whether the work connects and communicates to its audiences, not how you get there. The content, intent and techniques can vary as much as your subject and sources. Stylistic approach should connect to content and viewpoint. Breaking both conceptual rules and stylistic conventions are good if it enhances the end result. In the same way, using stereotypes and the tried and true can also work, if you are aware that you are employing them and why. Innovation can be inspiration.
Bibliography
Alcoff, Linda. The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique, Winter 1991-92
Barthe, Roland. (1982) Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang
Fitzpatrick, Blake. Documentary Media lecture, Ryerson University, Toronto, Jan. 15, 2008
Nichols, Bill. (2003) Getting to Know You: Knowledge, Power and the Body, in Renov, M, Theorizing Documentary, NY and London: Routledge, 174-226
Root, Deborah. (2003) Mapping the Disaster: Walid Ra’ad’s The Atlas Group Project and The Lebanese Civil War, Prefix Photo, issue 7, Spring Summer 2003
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2003
Wolfe, Charles. Direct Address and the Social Documentary Photograph: “Annie May Gudger” as Negative Subject, Wide angle 9:1
