La scarsa attenzione per i giudici a quibus

As with any language, the documentary form would die if it did not continually evolve.

Approaches to narrative, modes of discourse and the use of cinematic codes gradually become clichés and, in order for the documentary artist to prevent their work becoming stale and empty, they must continually refresh the language with elements of originality and innovation. What in part distinguishes the poet’s expression from idiomatic expression is the fact that the poet plays with language and metaphor, making new and unusual combinations that will help us see even familiar things in a fresh way. Many of the expressions and metaphors we see in idiomatic spoken and written language originated in poetry, found their way into ordinary everyday language and then became embedded in the core of our culture.

Likewise with the documentary language. Many components of a contemporary documentary which we take for granted were originally introduced by ‘poets’ of the form: the jump cut; the stylishly lit interview; the presenter-led interventionist style; the video diary; the non-diegetic use of music; even the observational style – these are examples of components of the documentary that were introduced by innovators and original creators. At any given time, the norms of the genre, the routines of the trade and the idioms of expression need to be renewed, refreshed, evolved and developed. There is not, and never was, an agreed documentary genre. The genre exists merely as a cluster of cinematic codes, the combination and use of which are constantly shifting.

It is therefore important that, as a creative documentary filmmaker, you do not fall into the trap of becoming a hack, someone who merely repeats the routines of the trade and form. If you want your audience to see afresh you will need to play with the form, with metaphors and imagery and with the processes you engage to create your work. This is clearly not something that can be taught or prescribed, as only you will know the answer through your own unique explo-ration. However, perhaps it is possible to identify a few qualities in yourself that you should try to encourage: these may include intuition, gullibility, playfulness and courage.

Intuition

We are both rational and irrational beings, as evidenced by the science of the right and left brain. Part of us wants to explain everything, to understand everything in a linear, causal chain and for all relationships between phenomena to fit a rational pattern.

Another side of us does not adhere to this rational engagement, but wants instead to engage with feelings. It does not seek to understand, but perhaps merely to experience.

It can accept paradoxes and coincidences without a need for explanation. It allows ‘gut feelings’ to come to the fore, works with imagery and metaphors and is generally con-sidered to be our ‘creative’ side. We live most of our lives in a world constructed by our rational world view and it can be very difficult to break out of this to engage with aspects of our experience which lie outside it. The arts, in general, play a vital part in opening us up to our other side and the documentary filmmaker, too, needs to engage with their irrational, intuitive and feeling side. You may be familiar with the expression ‘Listen to your intuition’: perhaps this is a quality you can work on developing.

Gullibility

This might at first seem like a strange quality to encourage. People often associate gulli-bility with a character flaw. However, gulligulli-bility suggests an open mind. It suggests a mind prepared to accept things initially at face value, a willingness to consider possibil-ities and notions that, at first glance, the rational or conditioned mind has dismissed as unreal, unfeasible, fantastical or plain ridiculous. Like a child’s mind, the gullible mind is willing to listen to people’s stories without making judgement, will recognise feelings without dismissing them out of hand and, above all, will be willing to try to make playful connections between phenomena and elements our schooling and rational constructs have long dismissed. A mind that is always sceptical is a closed mind. Try to encourage yourself to play with ‘impossible’ notions, ‘ridiculous’ ideas and ‘fantastical’

postulations. You will be surprised by how close to the truth the imagination can be.

Playfulness

We often think of children as being ‘creative’ and perhaps even remember ourselves as having been more creative as children than as adults. There is an openness – a gullibil-ity – about a child. Their mind has not yet been schooled and socialised into more fixed patterns of associations and thinking. This allows them to imaginatively combine notions and ideas that we, as adults, have long since learned do not belong together. And it is through play – the playful combination of images, ideas and associations – that the child learns and discovers. Perhaps, as adults, we need to unlearn many of the fixed notions and associations we have adopted, with a view to playfully questioning many of these assumptions. We can do so by breaking patterns of thinking and reconnecting phenom-ena and elements in new and evocative combinations.

Courage

It requires courage to successfully allow scope to the attributes of intuition, gullibility and playfulness mentioned above. Courage to challenge one’s own preconceptions and habits, courage to challenge the dominant norms of the genre and form, courage to stand alone in the face of ridicule and criticism, courage to listen and take criticism when relevant, courage to embrace what your rational mind says is a crazy idea and play with it. In other words, as a creative practitioner, you must have the courage to take risks.

Key points

• How are you linking your narrative form and style to your theme?

• How are you using the combination of sound and picture to tell your story? Your sounds, your pictures, your composition, style, texture, editing rhythm, music, and so on – all are components you are going to manipulate and you should be in control of them all.

• Everything you are putting in place should have a reason for being there, even if you only know that reason intuitively.

• Be aware of how the cinematic codes work; play with them, juxtapose them, explore.

• Remember: the fact that you may be working with factual roots does not mean you do not engage your imagination in creating your work.

• Remember that this medium is particularly successful when working with associations – partly because you are encouraging the audience to participate by using their own imagination.

• Don’t hide information from your audience, but think of the most powerful way you can share it with them, through which they can themselves wrestle with

associations, ambiguous consequences, paradoxes, and so on.

• Be courageous and take risks.

• Listen to your intuition.

• Play is an important part of the process of creation.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Choose one of the treatments you prepared for an earlier exercise and identify a particular scene in it.

Now imagine how that scene may unfold and storyboard that particular sequence twice: first with a view to shooting the whole sequence in one continuous hand-held shot; second with a view to shoot-ing the same scene with one static shot.

• How would you, or could you, use sound differently in the two scenarios?

• How is the pacing and rhythm of your scene affected?

• How would you approach your editing differently?

• What effect do your different approaches have on our emotional and feeling engagement with the scene?

Exercise 2

Choose a simple process or activity – such as the building of a campfire.

Prepare in two different ways how you are going to make a little film about someone making a campfire:

first, prepare for a short documentary that is going to be more classical in its structure and approach;

second, prepare an alternative documentary that is going to be more transcendental in its approach.

• How will you shoot each version differently in terms of shots, editing, sound, pacing and so on?

• What choices will you make to strengthen the differences?

• What choices will you make that will create a visual unity to each film?

• Do you see your differing approaches touching the viewer in different ways? And if so, how will that affect their relationship to, and knowledge of, building campfires?

Now make the two films and see how they live up to your predictions and expectations. ▲

Notes

1 Eliot, T.S. (2002) Preludes in Selected Poems, Faber and Faber.

2 For a more comprehensive study of semiotics, see Roland Barthes (1995) The Semiotic Challenge, Berkeley: University of California Press.

3 Remember that we are only separating these elements out for argument and understanding; in the real world things are likely to be blended, mixed and act upon each other.

4 Some of you may be familiar with the incident around the broadcast of Orson Welles’

adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1938). Orson Welles used all the codes of the factual news programme to create a drama, but the consequence was that 300,000 San Franciscans took to the streets in an effort to evacuate the city and Orson Welles had to apologise the following day. What do you think he was apologising for?

Exercise 3

Identify a very personal theme, feeling or emotion that you would like to get across to an audience without having to reveal anything autobiographical.

Now construct a short narrative film using entirely found footage – i.e. footage you have not been involved with shooting yourself, such as footage from the internet, family archive, footage from movies, stills from magazines etc. Screen your completed film to your friends and colleagues without telling them anything about the themes, feelings or emotions that inspired the work and let them talk about it.

Do you feel that you have managed to engage them in the themes, feelings and emotions that you hoped for initially? How has your approach to narrative structure and your approach to imagery succeeded, or not, in achieving a connection between your intentions and the reactions of your viewers?

Chapter 13

New media, new