Re: [Leica] Seriously, folks (long).

["Bryan Caldwell" <bcaldwell@softcom.net>]

Johnny,

I've always had a question about "documentary" war footage - especially WWII
naval battles. I'm always amazed at the wonderful sound effects that
accompany these films. Screaming airplanes, deafening explosions,
anti-aircraft fire, etc. It seems to me that this stuff was all shot with
"silent" cameras, certainly not with microphones positioned to get the type
of effects heard on the finished film.

Obviously, the sound effects are added to a lot of this footage. How do
others feel about this? Isn't adding an audio element just as ethically
questionable as adding a visual element?

Bryan

- ----- Original Message -----
From: Johnny Deadman <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 4:12 AM
Subject: [Leica] Seriously, folks (long).


> Not a word about underwear in this post, I promise.
>
> All the talk about restaging & interference in accident scenes etc.
prompts
> me to decloak and give you another perspective on this. For the last nine
> years I have been a documentary filmmaker (switched careers in April to
> writing), which I came to from documentary photography.
>
> There has been a lot of controversy in the UK over 'faked' documentaries
in
> the last year... much of it involving people I know and respect and have
> worked with. Some of them lost their jobs. But it reflects a real
dichotomy
> in attitudes to what is ethical, which I wanted to tell you about.
>
> As a doc photographer or photojournalist, I always took the view that I
> should NEVER fiddle with reality... to the extent that I found it hard to
> take portraits because I felt awkward about asking people to do particular
> things... I wanted to be that proverbial fly-on-the-wall (unless I was
doing
> Bill Klein street shots and trying to provoke a reaction with a flash or
> something...yeah, I got hit once).
>
> However, when I moved over into filmmaking, I was astonished to find that
> almost exactly the opposite ethic prevailed. Most, if not all, cameramen I
> worked with (and they were the best in the business) felt no compunction
at
> all about rearranging a scene to make it look better... those medical
papers
> fluttering in the foreground of the demolished hospital, you know the kind
> of thing.
>
> Moreover, even in 'fly on the wall' documentaries, a HUGE proportion of
the
> footage you see is restaged, if not entirely staged. I can say this now,
> because I'm not in the business any more, but if you ask anyone still in
the
> business they will deny it completely. Yes, it is a conspiracy...of
silence.
> Why do you think you never see fly-on-the-wall documentaries about the
> making of fly-on-the-wall documentaries? People have this idea all the
time,
> but no-one ever gives them access. Why? No filmmaker would be stupid
enough
> to open themselves up in this way.
>
> The reason for this elision of reality is very simple: time & money. You
> have to come back with a movie. If you need a particular sequence to make
it
> work, you will get it. Until you have experienced the stress of being a
> producer/director, responsible for several hundred thousand dollars worth
of
> investment, knowing you have to produce a rough cut for the exec producer
in
> four weeks, you can have no idea of the pressures involved. "We didn't get
> it" is one of those phrases that you only utter once in your professional
> career, if you see what I mean.
>
> Ethically speaking, most people I know in documentary regard it as
> unproblematic to restage a scene which genuinely took place, or even stage
a
> scene which usually would take place, or which is helpful for the
narrative.
> You've seen this kind of thing over and over: the deputy gets on the radio
> to the medical examiner, or reports back to his boss, or discusses what to
> do next... often when it's bleeding obvious what should be done next.
>
> Before I get flamed to death here, let me point out probably the most
> obvious example of demonstrably faked footage in existence. This is the
> motion picture film of trench warfare in WWI. I have been through
thousands
> of feet of this footage (obtained from the London Imperial War Museum) on
an
> editing bench while making a number of historical films. Almost all of
it -
> whether filmed by Brits, French or Germans - is faked. The dead giveaway
is
> the camera position -- several feet ABOVE the trench parapet. These babies
> were handcranked. Just feet away from the camera position soldiers are
> 'dying' as bullets allegedly hit them. If you go through the footage frame
> by frame, it is obvious they are not being hit, but just falling down.
> Besides, in the time it took to get the camera into position and shout
> action, the operator would have been picked off by the opposition.
>
> In fact, historians have investigated the footage and their research shows
> that much of it was shot in trenches some way back from the front line, or
> not in the field of combat at all. Some of it was even shot in practise
> trenches in England, though I have to say this stuff is very unconvincing
> when you look at it with the slightest closeness.
>
> What little real combat footage there is from WWI has an entirely
different
> quality from the 'going over the top' stuff you are probably familiar
with.
> For a start, it is shot at ground level, with the lens just poking over
the
> top of the trench. Half the frame is filled with mud, and it is almost
> unframed because the operator was cranking with his eye away from the
finder
> to avoid getting his head blown off. The soldiers who are running into
> no-man's land are doing so in obvious terror and disorder. The whole thing
> is suffused with panic, quite rightly so. The quality is shitty as hell,
all
> grain and chalk/soot tonality, because the light levels were so low (who'd
> attack in broad daylight?) and there is also very, very little of it for
> obvious reasons.
>
> (Similarly with the D-Day landings: the well-known ruined Capa shots have
> the same quality).
>
> In fact, the most authentic WWI footage comes not from the trenches but
from
> the treatment stations several miles back from the front line, where the
> horribly wounded soldiers were taken back to be pieced together or die.
> There is lots of this footage, and not a frame of it I have seen is faked,
> except some cheerful stuff with officers. The rest of it is horrible and
> harrowing. You can see that some of the troops have gone mad with fear or
> pain or shock. Elsewhere, there are great crowds of troops staring blankly
> at the camera, numb with exhaustion. They look like lost souls.
>
> But were these cameramen who shot the images we now carry in our
collective
> unconscious of, for example, the first day of the Somme in July 1916,
> 'faking'? Should they be condemned? I don't think so. Undoubtedly, they
> wished to convey pictorially what was happening before their eyes. Yet if
> they had filmed the real stuff, they would have been killed. What good
would
> that have done? When you see the other stuff they shot, you realise they
> were good, honest documentarians (very often). They weren't trying to make
> it look 'nice'. They were just doing the only thing they could to make
> pictures that would transmit information to the folks in cinemas back home
> whose sons and fathers were being blown to bits for reasons that were
> becoming less and less clear as the war dragged on.
>
> My point: reportage is a dirty business but somebody's got to do it.
> Silence, or the visual equivalent, is not always an option -- nor should
it
> be. Therefore, while I feel as betrayed as the next person when something
> with claims to authenticity turns out to be inauthentic, there is another
> point of view.
>
> Returning to the Iwo Jima/Capa soldier issue -- whatever the facts are, it
> would not surprise or particularly disturb me to learn that the Iwo Jima
> shot was staged, or restaged, or whatever you want to call it. We know
that
> the flag was indeed raised and in any case this picture is so full of
> political content (the similarities to Soviet propaganda of the time are
> striking) that you can hardly see it without beginning to decode it. But
if
> the Capa soldier were faked, that would disgust me. That picture clearly
> works because it claims to show the moment of death... if it doesn't, then
> it is a confidence trick, pure and simple.
>
> That's my gut opinion, anyway. I hope I have muddied the waters a
little...
> in my opinion, anyone who pretends they aren't muddy hasn't drunk deep
> enough of them.
>
> --
> Johnny Deadman <--- pseudonym, by the way, if you hadn't guessed
>
>