The Only Way to Protect the Audience From the Subjectivity of Cinema Creators - Essay Example

Cinema Verite is the only way to protect the audience from the subjectivity of cinema creators and directors Name: Course: Institution: Tutor: Date: Documentary films and cinema verite form one category of films with a lot of controversy. The controversy emanates from the argument on whether they are capable of presenting what they stand for.1 Documentaries seek to present a story from a first person’s perspective and cinema verite present truth from film subjects directly. With minimal editing, there is little input of the director either through instructions, editing, script and other many ways. So in essences, documentary films bring out the reality on the ground and present it to audiences as film. In other categories of films, the input and contribution of the director is visible through film. Cinema Verite is essentially based on the idea of minimizing the input of directors. Usually, there is minimal editing, natural background sound is used, and there are no scripts and no rehearsals.2 Conventionally, hand held cameras are used and many people have argue that they are of poor quality compared to contemporary films because of the non enhanced lighting and sound. Documentaries have borrowed this idea where the input of directors is minimized and natural sounds are used. This paper presents discussion to show that Cinema Verite is the only way to protect the audience from the subjectivity of cinema creators and directors using relevant theory from text and two films, ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse’[Coppola 1992] and ‘The War Room’ (Pennebaker and Hegedus 1993). The basic idea of cinema verite is to capture natural activities as they happen in real time on film. In most cases, cinema verite and documentaries tend to bring out the real life image of a person, group of persons in a more realistic manner as opposed to the construed image by the media and media personalities. Early American cinema verite is characterised by “restless, wondering movement of the lightweight, handheld cameras; blurred, grainy images of fast monochrome film; the preference (even unintelligible) synchronous sound over authoritative voice-over narration; and the impromptu performances of apparently preoccupied social actors.”3 Such a scenario in a film indicates that there is minimal intervention or rehearsals as compared to cotemporary films. In the film ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse’, the documentary captures the effects of weather and how frustrations flared up during the screening of the ‘Apocalypse Now’. So straining was the shooting of the movie which was said to have pushed the sanity of the director to the brink.4 Such scenes would remain unknown to the pubic as the actual film, Apocalypse Now, contains no such hints of the actual challenges involved in film making. The War Room sought to educate people that there is another reality about presidential campaigns that the public didn’t know apart form what it sees through the media. The film captures the emotions and the drama that surround presidential campaigns. While the public watches presidential campaign debates and public rallies, it has no idea of hat work goes on behind the scenes. The film captures the emotional outbursts and disagreements on various occasions to bring out the real life events behind the scenes of presidential campaigns. In fact, it is said that “documentaries are highly subjective, even emotional, interpretations of events5.” However, the camera or the documentarian does not afford “the best seat in the house” and hence there is a lot of reduction and selection in filming documentaries. In the case of “The War Room”, there is a lot of emphasis on the people running the elections campaign including the campaign manager, James Carville and communications director George Stephanopoulos.6 The issue of reality in documentaries and cinema verite has been strongly opposed. Coppola also assumes that it depicts reality by choosing to film the shooting of the Apocalypse Now. In the same way as “The War Room”, this documentary film, narrated by Eleanor Coppola, sought to show the audience the other side of film making besides the actual film. The documentary uses behind the scenes footage chronicling the activities of the crew, cast and director during the shooting of the ‘Apocalypse Now’. The documentary allowed the public to see social problems hidden from them on film and also allowed the subjects of the film to speak for themselves7. The absence of the contribution in such a case allows the story and the facts to remain intact. It has been argued that the input of a third part in narrating a story, other than the subject himself dilutes the contents and might hinder truth.8 However, some documentaries such as the Heart of darkness carry with them narrations. In this moves, Eleanor provides narration on the film. Does this mean that the truth is distorted in a documentary with a narrator? A section of scholars in literature claim that an author or narrator kills the realism of facts.9 Whether this is true or false is debatable. Take for instance the filming of the ‘Apocalypse Now’ in Philippines. The film was shot in Philippines though the actual film presented it as Vietnam. In the pacific country, the crew suffered a lot of problems in making the film which led to an unprecedented delay in releasing the film. To start with, the crew suffered major monsoon, civil unrest in Philippines and even the firing of a leading actor Harvey Keittel. Unfortunately, the replacement, Martin Sheen, suffered a heart attack in the shoot.10 Although some of these issues found their way in the media, only the documentary film of the shooting relayed the facts in the most real sense. The actual film, ‘Apocalypse Now’ did not capture such developments. Were it not for the documentary film, such news of bad weather and other reasons for delays would not be understood best by the public as they would only remain as distorted narrations by a third party. However, how a documentary presents facts and truth can be contested. A documentary should tell a story through its own words or else those of the subjects. In ‘The War Room’, the subjects of the film enable the story to flow through their daily events during presidential campaigns.11 However, a documentary can only present only a section of the unfolding events at a time. The fact that the camera man does not get the best seat in the room, in terms of capturing the live events implies that the audience can only get to see what the documentarian and director thought was worthwhile to capture without necessarily editing.12 For instance, in ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse’, the documentary did not capture all the subjects of people involved in the shooting of the, ‘Apocalypse Now’ but what they felt was important in achieving the goal of the documentary. The same ways goes for “The War Room”. Clinton’s campaign manager, Clinton himself and the campaigns communications manager received the utmost attention in the documentary. The documentary directors chose to ignore some minor roles played by other subjects involved in the campaigns. As such, the facts and the truth in the whole documentary are not wholly realistic. By presenting facts and the truth, documentaries and direct cinema informs the audience and protects the audience from potential miseducation from film directors.13 In a study on sample audience on watching a documentary film ‘Etre et Avoir,’ a respondent commented “The way it showed real life with all its ups and downs, hard work and difficulties, moments of success and joy, its ordinariness without resorting to "reality TV" type tricks. Such close observation”14 This could indicate that the public is able to acknowledge what is real and not real. In hearts of darkness, the film shows the issues surrounding film actors such as drug use and how they relate at work. This is in line with the idea of a documentary not encouraging the audience to form an opinion but rather tell it as it is. Both The War Room and the Heart of Darkness confront the audience with empirical evidence that cannot be disputed by facilitating the facts recorded to speak for themselves.15 There are arguments that it is impossible to present realism in film. George Franju, a renowned film critic and scholar said that “there isn’t any cinema verite. It is necessarily a lie, from the moment the director intervenes- or it isn’t cinema at all.”16 Franju’s comments are based on his opinion about the medium used to present realism and the truth. He is convinced that cinema in incapable of presenting the truth as it is impossible to create cinema without the input of the director.17 However, proponents of cinema verite argue that directors play an objective and impartial role and hence have no intention of distorting the truth or facts. However, some documentaries are produced with a view to of rationally persuading the audience by aiming at highlighting emotive issues. Such documentaries largely deal with social issues such as climate change and drug use. In the case of The War Room and the Heart of Darkness; a directors apocalypse, the idea is to inform the public on issues that the public is usually unaware of. Although there have been debates for and against cinema verite, it is apparent from the discussion above that cinema verite is the only way to protect the audience from the subjectivity of film directors in the quest to present truth, reality and facts. Their involvement in documentaries in kept at the minimum. Where their involvement is necessary such as through narration, they play an impartial role. This enables them to present facts as they unfold and allow subjects to tell their stories. However, it must be acknowledged that directors also have the potential to distort facts and truth. This demeans the term cinema verite and does not portray what cinema verite and documentaries stand for. For documentaries and cinema verite to remain a depiction of truth and reality, the involvement of the director should be kept to the possible minimum. References Ball, M. & Smith, G. (2007). Technologies of realism? Ethnographic uses of photography and film. In Delamont, S., Coffey, A., Lofland, J., Atkinson, P. & Lofland, L. (eds), Handbook of ethnography (pp. 302-320). London: Sage Barthes, R. (1984). The death of the author. In Heath, S. (ed.), Image, music, text (pp. 145-148). London: Flamingo Crawford, M. & Rossiter, G. (2006). Reasons for living: education and young people's search for meaning, identity and spirituality - a handbook. Sydney: Aust Council for Ed Research. Hall, J. (1998). Don’t you ever just watch? American cinema verite and don’t look back. In Grant, B. (ed), Documenting the documentary: close readings of documentary film and video (pp. 223-237). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Mayfiled, L., Zaloom, G. (Producers) & Hickenlooper, G. & Bahr, F. (Directors). (1992). Hearts of darkness: a filmmaker’s apocalypse (motion picture) US. Minh-ha, T. (2012). Totalizing the quest of meaning. In Renov, M. (ed.) Theorizing documentary (pp. 90-107). London: Routledge. Pennebaker, F., Ettinger, W. & Cutler, R. (Producers) & Pennebaker, D. & Hegedus, C. (Directors). (1993). and Hegedus' "The War Room" (motion picture). US. Rollins, P. & O’Connor, J. (2010). Hollywood's white house: the American presidency in film and history. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Thomas, A. (2005). Seeing, Feeling, Knowing: A case study of audience perspectives on screen documentary. The journal of audience & reception studies, 2(1), 221-232. Read More