I remember negotiating with a bigwig, he was in demand, he said hed like to do it, and requested a donation to a nonprofit. (Documentaries) can offer in-depth, detailed looks at what the news media will only superficially cover, but theyre more and more opinion based and less fact based, said Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan professor of film studies at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. We did talk to that other person on the phone and then decided not to interview them for the film. That paradigm isnt going to stand any longer.. 25 \sqrt { 3 }\ m ^ { 2 } } \\ {B. . . This baseline research is necessary to begin any inquiry into ethical standards because the field has not yet articulated ethical standards specific to documentary. In both situations, they used deception to keep someone with the power to stop the project from doing so, and they regarded it as entirely ethical because of an ends-justifies-the-means argument. a company hires 14 new employees onto sales team A and 14 new employees onto sales Team B. within one year 2 of the new team A employees and 6 of the new team B employees have quit. It would have made a fabulous turning point in the film, but I didnt include it. It appears to justify the overall goal of communicating the important themes, processes, or messages within the (required) entertaining narrative frame, while still permitting the necessary distortions to fit within that frame and the flexibility to deal with production exigencies. I wasnt comfortable with it but I did it. Dixon suggests viewers beware certain hallmarks designed to sway them. Furthermore, producers, who were held responsible for the standards, are typically forbidden to offer subjects the right of review or to restage events; they are required to ensure that image and sound properly represent reality, and that music and special effects are used sparingly. [Our subject] had one for radio; we used the audio and made a commercial [to go with the audio]. Were no longer seen as an institution thats fair and balanced. That lack of balance and fairness is precisely the worry for some journalists and media analysts. Stanley Nelson said, People have to know and feel its a recreation. The film becomes a historical document. Filmmakers thus find themselves without community norms or standards. Taped confessions? You dont owe them more than that.. WasFahrenheit 9/11accurate in its factual indictment of the Bush administrations geopolitics? At a time when there is unprecedented financial pressure on makers to lower costs and increase productivity, filmmakers reported that they routinely found themselves in situations where they needed to balance ethical responsibilities against practical considerations. Documentary filmmakers typically are small business owners, selling their work to a range of distributors, mostly in television. Making a Murderer is exploitation entertainment, Dixon said. AfterHoop Dreamsbecame wildly successful, noted Gordon Quinn, Kartemquin Films shared profits (based on screen time) with everyone who had a speaking role in the film. a home goods stores sells 385 lamps in the month of July. If its 1958 Manila . I am keenly aware of the hypocrisy of asking someone for access that I myself would probably not grant. They let you be there as their life unfolds, said Steven Ascher, and that carries with it a responsibility to try to anticipate how the audience will see them, and at times to protect them when necessary., I often think, Let me be this person watching the film. Would they hate me? In that instance, I didnt feel it would affect what he was going to say.. At the same time, they shared unarticulated general principles and limitations. That is the most deliberate falsification Ive ever done . They were minors, and might have problems with their families or with the law. Another director cited a situation where one high school kid would lift a girl and put her head-first in a trashcan after the teacher had left. This study explores those questions. The ethical tensions in the second focused on ways to maintain a viewers faith in the accuracy and integrity of the work. They commonly shared such principles as, in relation to subjects, Do no harm and Protect the vulnerable, and, in relation to viewers, Honor the viewers trust.. We want to have a human relationship with our subjects, said Gordon Quinn, but there are boundaries that should not be crossed. The reason we still talk about [this] is because it was a perfect ethical conundrum. The whole truth is always more complex than whats on newsprint or celluloid. No, I never show rough cuts to subjects. a bartenders monthly pay consist of $2,400 base salary plus 10% in tips aon average for all drinks sold. Woelfel said changes in journalism in the last 20 years have paved the way for audiences to crave the detail of documentaries. Filmmakers identified challenges in two kinds of relationships that raised ethical questions: with subjects and with viewers. You have to condense, but you cant manipulate., Dixon used the popular documentary Blackfish, about the quality of life of SeaWorld orcas, as another example. Despite its detours, this doc about the alleged 1948 massacre of a Palestinian village clicks into a sobering portrait of collective memory. For the most part, however, when it comes to standards and ethics (and even independent fact checking), documentary filmmakers have largely depended on individual judgment, guidance from executives, and occasional conversations at film festivals and on listservs. . Julie Ha and Eugene Yi's involving documentary covers a U.S. wrongful conviction case that ultimately helped improve cultural and judicial sensitivities. In this case, they worked for a good-faith relationship that would not put their subjects at risk or cause them to be worse off than they were before the relationship began. At the same time, they themselves are vulnerable in a wider media system. Adi Rukun, left, questions Commander Amir Siahaan, one of the death squad leaders responsible for his brothers death during the Indonesian genocide, in Joshua Oppenheimers documentary The Look of Silence. Courtesy of Drafthouse Films and Participant Media. They were much happier, I was much happier, and the film was better because of it.. . They also lacked support for ethical deliberation under typical work pressures. Filmmakers also face pressure to inflate drama or character conflict and to create drama where no natural drama exists. Would you believe an interview with Dick Cheney if you knew he was paid a hefty honorarium? "Zappa" gives its subject his well-earned due within the rock firmament. To me the difference is that journalism offers us a window into new information and ideally tries to put it into context so it can be useful somehow. We will show the film before it is finished. The ongoing effort to strike a balance, and the negotiated nature of the relationship, was registered by Gordon Quinn: We say to our subjects, We are not journalists; we are going to spend years with you. By the late 1990s, U.S. documentary filmmakers had become widely respected media makers, recognized as independent voices at a time of falling public confidence in mainstream media and in the integrity of the political process. Its too misleading to the audience. They also respected broadcasters fact-checking departments, and some found that people in those departments were willing to push back against network pressures to fudge facts or artificially enhance drama. Blackfish is what Dixon considers an advocacy film," even though the film spurred change that journalism may not, because of ethical considerations, have been able to achieve. . I felt that my obligation was fulfilled. In another case, a director decided not to show footage to a subject who wanted approval over material used, because he feared the subject would refuse to permit use. The 6 Types of Documentary Films - The Beat: A Blog By PremiumBeat At the same time, documentary television production was accelerating to fill the need for quality programming in ever-expanding screen time, generating popular, formula-driven programs. Still another grappled with this issue in the editing room: I was complaining to someone [that] I feel some allegiance to them, and the person said that at this point your only allegiance should be with the audience. the politicians earlier association with the student communist movement ________________ his reputation with some in his party, who feared his history would hurt his chances of being elected, the documentary became popular due to its subject matter, it dealt with sensitive topic but ____________ the information in a palatable way. what is the price of the stock after two years, a coffee shop sold 300 beverages during one morning shift. . to prove that other sresidents considered the new billboard to be a _______ on the neighborhood, he conducted a survey in hopes of documentary his neighbors negative reaction to it. For all their aesthetic beauty, both The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence occupy an unsure place on the continuum of cultural forms. They take you to places that you will never see in the so-called mainstream media. But they can also be manipulated.. What It's Like to Be the Subject of a Documentary Film In Egypt, I had a fixer who paid everyone as we went, thats the way they do things there. an hourly worker whose wage is 15 per hour will be paid how much for an 8 hour shift, which of the following is the. Some filmmakers acknowledged that they occasionally would resort to bad faith and outright deception, both with subjects and with gatekeepers who kept them from subjects. Filmmakers often felt that subjects had a right to change their minds (although the filmmakers found this deeply unpleasant) or to see the material involving them or even the whole film in advance of public screenings. The difference is, if Im making a fictional film, Superman can fly. He justified it by the result: Ultimately there is a story to be told, you may have to make these compromises. The core data was gathered in long-form, hour-long interviews, grounded in open-ended questions, conducted usually by phone. [30] he didnt have family photos. At the end of the day, it became a mother-son deal and they worked it out. In this case, the filmmakers objective was maintaining the relationship and salvaging key footage. Its one of those areas where our responsibility to our audience and our responsibility to our subjects can be at odds. When Im working on a doc, I try not to lie, said Sam Pollard. It did not compromise an ultimate truth.. . In the case of subjects who they believed were less powerful in the relationship than themselves, they believed that their work should not harm the subjects or leave them worse off than before. The relationship between documentary subject and documentarian has been fraught with conflict since the genre's evolution beyond "actualities" and into a narrative format pioneered by Robert Flaherty. Maybe you cant. Clockwise from top left: Casting JonBenet; Homecoming, Dirty Money, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead; Miss Americana; Jim & Andy. it would have been a betrayal to not listen to her. Ross Kaufman noted that the subjects disagreed with the coda at the end of one of his films, saying that it did not ring true to them . Public more agency in news gathering, Cross said. Filmmakers need to share both experience and vocabulary and to be able to question their own and others decision-making processes without encountering prohibitive risk. In thinking about their subjects, filmmakers typically described a relationship in which the filmmaker had more social and sometimes economic power than the subject. A June 2020 article in The New York Times reviewed the political documentary And She Could Be Next, directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. If the tables were turned, God forbid, said Joe Berlinger, I would never allow them to make a film about my tragedy. Unlike journalism, documentary filmmaking has largely been an individual, freelance effort. . In both these cases, the choices not to honor the subjects requests reflected the fact that the subjectsboth experts, not less-powerful subjectsattempted to exert control over the films outcome that differed from that of the filmmakers. I have to be careful not to abuse the friendship with the subject, but its a rapport that is somewhat false, said one. Its not meant to be consumed the day its produced.. Anonymity permitted filmmakers to speak freely about situations that may have put them or their companies under uncomfortable scrutiny. But part of this subject matter is the graphic depiction of the attitude of the youths as they beat the man; they are represented as enjoying their act of brutality. Its a moral decision not to enter their lives to only show how poor they are, said one. Concerns about documentary ethics are not new, but they have intensified over the past several years in response to changes in the industry. Originating in the 1960s alongside advances in portable film equipment, the Cinma Vrit -style is much less pointed than the expository approach. In a certain sense there is something deceptive about that. . her less experienced colleague takes 1.6 hours to complete a root canal. We discussed it with her, and then she felt comfortable. a safety specialist can complete an inspection in .5 hours. One director recalled, I knew personal information about one of the [subjects] that I thought would make the film richer, but she was confiding to me in person, not as a filmmaker . You have to open your eyes and trust yourself. The growth of commercial opportunities and the prominence of politics as a documentary subject also produced tensions. Many filmmakers believed that payment was not only acceptable but a reasonable way to address the power differential, even though payment often sufficed only to cover costs of participation. . if the cost per dozen eggs rises to $1.80, how much more will the restaurant have to pay for eggs per week, based on the ______________ behavior and _________________ toward service staff exhibited by the job applicant before his interview, the hiring manager decided not to move forward with his application. Occasionally filmmakers even shared film profits with the subjects, although not as a contractual matter from the start. Unbeknownst to me, the [animal wrangler] broke the next rabbits leg, so it couldnt run. For todays documentary filmmakers, it appears to grace a set of choices about narrative and purpose in the documentary. Their comments can be grouped into three conflicting sets of responsibilities: to their subjects, their viewers, and their own artistic vision and production exigencies. Only one respondent, Jennifer Fox, said that she offered fine cut approval in a legal document, with the caveat that the subjects couldnt object to the film because they didnt like the way they looked but could object to things on the grounds of hurting their family. This relationship was, however, much more abstract than the one with their subjects. There are some filmmakers who love the down and dirtyI found a fool and I will show them as a fool. This is justified sometimes, but its often abusive of your power., Filmmakers also recognized limits to the obligation to the subject. Are there music cues? . He wanted us to interview someone else as a precondition [for using his own interview], Nelson said. Is somebody on the soundtrack telling you what to think? I may get in by a sneaky way but hold up standards in the final product. Another gained access to someone in prison by writing on BBC letterhead stationery, although he was not working for the BBC. This study demonstrates the need to have a more public and ongoing conversation about ethical problems in documentary filmmaking. For instance, filmmakers also regularly used re-creations (re-staging of events that have already occurred, whether in the recent or distant past), although they widely believed that it was important that audiences be made aware somehow that the footage is recreated. All Rights Reserved. I usually say no, its a conflict of interest, but sometimes you really want someone to do the interview. Another thought it was more a matter of cultural norms. The Subject Matter Expert: A Definition and How To Become One The awareness of a power differential also leads filmmakers sometimes to volunteer to share decision-making power with some subjects. It shocks us with that quaking moment of recognition, Oppenheimer said. inaccurately, for mood or tone, . But those kinds of distortions are often necessary to tell the story or to compress ideas that would otherwise take too long. Watch documentaries that dont align with your opinion, Breyer said. One subject when drunk revealed something he had never revealed when sober, and in the filmmakers opinion probably would not. Why? The ethical conflicts put in motion by these features of a filmmakers embattled-truth-teller identity are, ironically for a truth-telling community, unable to be widely shared or even publicly discussed in most individual cases. It was so powerful. If youre a filmmaker you try to create a POV, you bend and shape the story to your agenda . Its your reputation. . the cryptocurrency appreciates 200% in the first year and 150% in the next. Gallup reports that just 40 percent of Americans trust media outlets to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. Amid dwindling trust in the press, documentaries with strong, emotional points of view can feel more authentic by comparison. Class 12 Class 11 Class 10 Class 9 Class 2 Class 1 A Practice Book of English Class 11 English Medium NCERT Class 11 English - Hornbill High School English Grammar and Composition Book by Wren & Martin For example, any kind of romantic relationship would be unacceptable. Some filmmakers, however, did give subjects the right to decide whether or not their material should be included in the film.