Producing not displaying

Every time I thought I knew what she was talking about two paragraphs later I had to change my mind.  The concept of mimesis? What is that? I had better look it up.

I am thinking, “Okay this film must look something like “Over Washington” a PBS production that was stunningly beautiful in its depiction of the landscape and the people of WA State, that some people found incredibly boring, which I, of course, being a native of Washington State, loved. Then I am lost amid all that poetic talk about the “visual Poetics” and how they enable the “the flowing, the play of depth and shallows, the surging revelation

and concealments of patterns and shapes” (Deger 2007:114). Ohhh maybe I don’t like thick description…quelle horror!. And just when I am thinking that this is beyond me, the author speaks of the video as a way of producing culture, rather than displaying culture, “dictated by Western imaginations” (Deger:2007:116).  What caught me up in a wonder was that I want to acknowledge that cultures evole. They don’t always disappear. And just like thousands  of years ago, technologies are still under diffusion. This technology in the hands of cultural teachers can do so much good. I liked the way the film played into the concept of “Oral Traditions” by the use of the viewer’s imagination to create images that are linked to the water. Sometimes people forget that often have visual elments seen and unseen. That I understand and can appreciate.

Best words said:

“The point is that Gularri is not a film about Yolngu culture—it is film that seeks to produce Yolngu culture and identity by generating a specific experience of viewing that is immediately recognized by Yolngu as something other than the ordinary or everyday act of watching television”(Deger2007:116)

Deger Jennifer, Seeing the Invisible: Yolngu Video as Revelatory Ritual, Visual Anthropology, 20: 103–121, 2007
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online
DOI: 10.1080/08949460601152765

Interviews, the good, the bad and the endless editing we could avoid if we did it right

The essay or chapter entitled “Interviews” that appears in the book, Cross Cultural Filmmaking by Ilsa Barbash and Lucien Taylor was a perfect reading for this week in my Visual Anthro class. Although as I read it I could see how much it would have helped me to have read the whole book last year when I was trying to make movies. The reading has given me a list of things to remember for myself and a list to discuss with my comrades in filmmaking.

Do we want the Two shot= both interviewer and interviewee are present. I am not a fan as I don’t like to see myself. Alternative is to Shoot interviewer asking questions, once interview is over. I like that, that way one person can appear to asking all the questions…or is that too deceitful, ah ethics? The questions provide context and are needed. We could ask interviewees to repeat the question that is what I did in my interviews. What about reaction shots---interviewer and interviewee alike, each listening to each other or maybe two interviewees listening to each other. We should add Reflexivity…we could do that by adding film discussions of interviews, film meetings? Cutaways: film them at the time, make notes during if they talk about a particular place or item, symbolic items/places. Look for inserts; clocks, paintings, bugs,

Use tripod or monopod…Camera as an objective observer and I am shaky. I have done interviews before and never had a person uncomfortable in front of the camera. Of course I took time to let them relax, I was very informal and chatty.

Interviewees:
Film couples together…more dynamic, casual clothes, include unwind time, film at eye level, , give a comfort speech; interruptions, more footage than needed, can edit out bloopers/pauses. Ask the interviewees: do you have advice for the people still working there. What would be a good question to ask others?
Interviewers: This week we need everybody’s input on the questions we will ask
Film arrivals? Film a moving (movement, walking) discussion (with janitors nearby)
Maybe more of an oral history of retired or disenfranchised past janitors of UFL.

This reading has given me so many things to think about concerning the production of interviews. I am going to start on my questions right now as I am all inspired to get at it. I think that I should get a book like this and read the whole book.

Barbash, Ilsa and Lucien Taylor, (1997) Interviews. In Cross Cultural Filmmaking. Berkeley:University of California Press Pp:341-357.

Love that quote:

The authors quote French film historian Gabriel Marcel on the topic of the aesthetics of film and interviews. Marcel explains what he thinks of interviews of talking heads and why they are often misplaced and unappreciated.  "Why? Because the spectator does not go to the movies to listen to explications"(Barbash and Taylor 1997:341)

A skilled gaze, is learned

Felice Tiragallo’s article, Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology, discusses the responsibilities and techniques involved in turning a filmic gaze into a skilled gaze.  Tiragallo writes of how a young Dutch filmmaker, Joris Ivens, had trouble finding the right angle with which to film the workers of a reclamation project(Tiragallo 2007:201). Finally after he had experienced the work himself, he realized what was important for his film to convey. We should have done earlier collaboration with our subjects to find out what they thought was important. By the time we found out what was true important story for us to tell, it was too late for us to create the film we needed to. Although meaning is produced differently in visual anthropology, the anthropologist still needs to construct the vision with all the standards and critical expectation one would expect in a written work (Tirgallo 2007:211). Doing this would allow for a more interpretive identity rather than an objective one (Tirgallo2007:211).

The best quote in this week’s reading was in Inga Burrows essay, The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation.

 “The planned filming approach was quickly abandoned”(Burrows 2005:93). I could really relate!

Tiragallo, Felice (2007)'Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology', Visual Anthropology,20:2,201 — 219

Burrows, Inga (2005) The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation. In Visualizing Anthropology.90-99