[30] For example, the main subject of "Silence" an optometrist, Adi Rukun, who was born after his older brother was murdered openly confronts his brother's likely (but unconfirmed) killers in front of the camera as a sort of impromptu and very damning confessional. One said that as long as the activities they do are those they would normally be doing, if your filming doesnt distort their life there is still a reality that is represented. Another recalled asking her subjects to stage an annual event earlier in the year than it would happen in real life: I would not want to put words in peoples mouth, or edit them in a way thats not leading to the larger truth. 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. Also included were four executive producers in national television programming organizations. The documentary became public due to its subject matter, it dealt with a sensitive topic but indicated the information in a plateable way. In still another case, an HIV-positive mother addicted to drugs asked filmmakers not to reveal where she lives. Co-director, Center for Media & Social Impact, American University, Peter Jaszi, What I think makes a documentary is attempting to tell a story in a way that helps, but it doesnt always adhere to the rules of journalism, Cross said. . Thats irrefutable evidence of the injustice thats going on and it wasnt the mainstream media that provided it, although it used it, Breyer said. One filmmaker said that she tries to be as authentic as possible, down to the year and the place. At the same time, many of the filmmakers surveyed spoke of commercial pressures, particularly in the cable business, to make decisions they believed to be unethical. Many documentary filmmakers work with people whom they have chosen and typically see themselves as stewards of the subjects stories. Then, its got our companys name on it. I regret it. we operate under a do-no-harm policy.. His promotion of the term has been criticized, by scholar Brian Winston, among others, for allowing ethical choices to go unexamined. Filmmakers repeatedly referenced problems with using historical materials, which document specific people, places, and times, as generic references or in service to a particular and perhaps unrelated point. 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. inaccurately, for mood or tone, . Despite the can't-miss subject matter, "Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal" makes a near-fatal misstep, heavily using dramatic recreations in a way that leaves this Netflix . She said she was trained to think of archival this way, to think that as a filmmaker, you put it out there as truth. . The filmmaker whose subjects were financially strapped did not talk about money in initial conversations, but a year later, when he was still filming, he offered his subjects a $5,000 honorarium. When the filmmaker showed a scene of a handcuffed minor in juvenile halla crucial and pivotal sceneto the family, in spite of having releases, the mother objected. Then Id be suspicious, Dixon said, adding that dramatic re-enactments, too, can be manipulative. 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. One said, That is part of how you generate revenue as a filmmaker . Dixon suggests viewers beware certain hallmarks designed to sway them. Institutional standards and practices remain proprietary to the companies for which the filmmakers may be working and do not always reflect the terms they believe are appropriate to their craft. However, when filmmakers did not empathize with, understand, or agree with the subjects concern, or when they believed the subject had more social power than they did, they overrode it. In some ways, Michael Mann's Ali, starring an Oscar-nominated Will Smith in the title role, plays like When We Were Kings stretched out into a moody, ambient-leaning slow motion. Jump cuts might be more honest about the rearranging going on but might be unwatchable. . It was the right thing to do, he said, because it was their lives, their stories that made it successful. The two central characters had equal shares with the three filmmakers. In one case, a filmmaker decided to withhold information about a public figures drug addiction in order to create the strongest cinematic experience. Great journalism shouldnt, either., Copyright 2023 Deseret News Publishing Company. Documentary filmmakers, whether they were producing histories for public television, nature programs for cable, or independent political documentaries, found themselves facing not only economic pressure but also close scrutiny for the ethics of their practices. Are they works of art? I remember negotiating with a bigwig, he was in demand, he said hed like to do it, and requested a donation to a nonprofit. Wanda Bershen is a consultant on fundraising, festivals and distribution. I had to do it. While some said that they would never lie to a subject about what they were doing in the film, many believed that the decision needed to be taken on a case-by-case basis, considering the goal of the film and the relationship with the viewer. an=(4.5,2,0.5,3,5.5,)?a_n=(4.5,2,-0.5,-3,-5.5,\ldots)? Steven Ascher said: You could argue that cutaways in a scene filmed with one camera are a distortionyou cut from a person talking to a reaction shot, condensing or reshuffling dialogue before you cut back to the person. At the same time, they shared unarticulated general principles and limitations. WasFahrenheit 9/11accurate in its factual indictment of the Bush administrations geopolitics? How much do their own reasoning processes correlate with existing journalism codes? 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. It spoke to the possibilities as well. " Free Chol Soo Lee " charts the . The trend towards faster and cheaper documentaries and the assembly line nature of work has proven challenging to filmmakers understanding of their obligations to subjects in particular. All interviewees were provided with a consent form that had been approved by the American University Institutional Review Board, and all were offered anonymity. Especially on a historical documentary, I keep to the facts. Click hereto view or download a PDF of this report. But for us to inflict pain to get a better shot was the wrong thing to do. Filmmakers were asked to speak about their own experiences, focusing on the recent past, rather than generalizing about the field. Here this guy worked for five days and they get no glory, they go back to their regular jobs. The producer noted that the filmmakers work for a for-profit venture, and were making our money based on these peoples stories . In a world where people deny the Holocaust, you dont want to give wind to that fire. My test for these things is, Does the audience know what its getting? . . Woelfel said changes in journalism in the last 20 years have paved the way for audiences to crave the detail of documentaries. Perhaps because the terms of these releases were not their own, filmmakers often provided more leeway to their subjects than the strict terms provided in them. Center for Media & Social ImpactSchool of Communication,American University4400 Massachusetts Ave NW If youre a filmmaker you try to create a POV, you bend and shape the story to your agenda . September 2009 by what amount will the value of the stock need to go up from there in order that the price of the stock will be equal to what the investor first paid for it, David C. Lay, Judi J. McDonald, Steven R. Lay, Statistical Techniques in Business and Economics, Douglas A. Lind, Samuel A. Wathen, William G. Marchal, Arthur David Snider, Edward B. Saff, R. Kent Nagle. What are their concerns? Its your reputation. Its part of our work and our interpretation, said one. Sophie says that (7c2d+12cd2+3)+(5c2d2cd28)=12c2d+10cd25\left(7 c^{2} d+12 c d^{2}+3\right)+\left(5 c^{2} d-2 c d^{2}-8\right)= 12 c^{2} d+10 c d^{2}-5(7c2d+12cd2+3)+(5c2d2cd28)=12c2d+10cd25. This relationship was, however, much more abstract than the one with their subjects. We have the money. Observational Documentaries Observational documentaries aim to observe the world around them. Its an accepted norm to pay fees. With the Holocaust, you really dont want to show anything other than the exact day or place. Many filmmakers noted that restaging routine or trivial events such as walking through a door was part and parcel of the filmmaking process and was not what makes the story honest. But many filmmakers went much further, without discomfort. 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 . a bartenders monthly pay consist of $2,400 base salary plus 10% in tips aon average for all drinks sold. They may be encouraged to alter the story to pump up the excitement, the conflict, or the danger. A new mini documentary, released Thursday on YouTube by crypto consulting firm Emfarsis and gaming company Yield Guild Games called "Play-to-Earn," follows several Filipino people who play the . . They didnt demand it, but they were right. But you should also develop core competencies that help you collaborate with clients and meet their expectations. . Hopefully you do it in a way that ultimately, with the finished product that I had a clear conscience. . Unbeknownst to me, the [animal wrangler] broke the next rabbits leg, so it couldnt run. Its become an easy thing to do to say that we dont pay. Some filmmakers, however, did give subjects the right to decide whether or not their material should be included in the film. . Individual filmmakers may develop concurrent projects with and for a range of television programmers, from PBS to the Food Channel, balancing sponsored work (for income) with projects of the heart. What is the difference? A cable TV producer argued that the ethical thing to do would be to pay subjects. Cross and Breyer contend that as journalism appeals to niche audiences, truth itself has become a more slippery and relative concept than it once was making the nuanced, emotional approach of documentaries more appealing. . what is the average number of book sold per month during the five month period, which of the following is the largest value. Steven Ascher said that revealing a subjects weaknesses or positions that the audience is likely to find laughable or repellant can be justified when they are taking advantage of other people or when they are so completely convinced of their own rightness, they would be happy with their portrayal. Similarly, both Oppenheimer's films make use of re-enactments of events in question, which some documentary purists consider questionable because they're easily changed or fabricated. I dont think you can call that a documentary because a documentary presents the whole picture.. Subject matter experts, also called SMEs, are professionals who have advanced knowledge in a specific field. In a certain sense there is something deceptive about that. They believe that they come into a situation where their subjects, whether people or animals, are relatively powerless and theyas media makershold some power. They take you to places that you will never see in the so-called mainstream media. But they can also be manipulated.. He chose to do this because the subjects had asked for money, and he felt that by then his access was not predicated on the payment, and that this was an important gesture to make. Another filmmaker found subjects, who were immigrants, asking to borrow money, which she refused to do because she feared it would jeopardize her working relationship with them:You cross the line, are you the filmmaker or their best friend in America? Symbolic tribunals?. Anonymity permitted filmmakers to speak freely about situations that may have put them or their companies under uncomfortable scrutiny. . The differing styles of documentary and injection of cinematic elements that arguably make them more interesting has made it harder to define documentary and its goals even among professionals, no two definitions of a documentary are quite the same. . 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. Julie Ha and Eugene Yi's involving documentary covers a U.S. wrongful conviction case that ultimately helped improve cultural and judicial sensitivities. 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. That critique has popped up a lot recently Netflixs miniseries Making and Murderer was criticized for omitting some facts of the case it examined, HBOs The Jinx was similarly judged for not going to police immediately when they found they had a taped confession of the killer, and the true crime podcast Serial has been scrutinized for being too one-sided. Then she was OK.. One filmmakers client hired her to make an educational documentary for middle school kids and to leave out the fact that Americans dropped the first atomic bomb. This protective attitude was dropped when filmmakers found an act ethically repugnant, often seeing their job as exposing malfeasance. Or would they think its fair? one filmmaker told us. They portray themselves as storytellers who tell important truths in a world where the truths they want to tell are often ignored or hidden. Treatment of archival materials (especially still and motion photographic materials) was widely recognized as a site of ethical challenges, but there was a wide range of responses. To achieve those goals, standards uphold accuracy, fairness, and obeying of law, including privacy law. In relation to viewers, they often justified the manipulation of individual facts, sequences, and meanings of images, if it meant telling a story more effectively and helped viewers grasp the main, and overall truthful, themes of a story. . Documentary filmmakers typically are small business owners, selling their work to a range of distributors, mostly in television. Everyone raised their hands. How can you tell whats true? And these are just a few examples. I said, I dont care what youre talking about, we have to put it in there . Gallup reports that just 40 percent of Americans trust . a store has a sale where all hats are sold at a discount of 40%. 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. One struggles enough in making a good film. She has organized programs with the Human Rights Film Festival, Brooklyn Museum and Film Society of Lincoln Center and currently teaches arts management at CUNY Baruch. He is still in contact with his characters, but he admitted they felt betrayed by [him] in some way. They had expected the filmmaker to protect them by not including comments they made and remembered making. Gordon Quinn recalled, I made a film in the 70s about an 11-year -old girl growing up. 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. . People who love documentaries love Netflix because the streaming . In one of the most intense moments of director Joshua Oppenheimers acclaimed film, The Look of Silence, viewers are treated to an unflinching, discomfiting shot that gives the film its title: A former militiaman and mass murderer, now elderly, stares into the camera, his eyes eerily magnified by optometrists testing lenses as he searches, with the audience, for an answer to his horrendous crimes, the silence as penetrating as his gaze. A substantial minority of filmmakers argued that they would never allow a subject to see the film until it was finished. It has no ethics. 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 journalistic practice, payment is usually forbidden for fear of tainting the information garnered. For todays documentary filmmakers, it appears to grace a set of choices about narrative and purpose in the documentary. What is the exact area of an equilateral triangle with sides of length 10 m? M. Night Shyamalan decided to make the 2017 horror film, Split, on a budget of only $9 million, which proved to be a fantastic decision. Its not about 1965, its about the terrible consequences of impunity in the present.. Although the result was unintentional, he also felt no remorse. When the facts of a film are up to a single filmmaker, the truth, too, can become subject to style choices. The larger truth is that this conversation is going to happen in this city, at some point, and so it doesnt matter that it doesnt happen at this moment. the more fundamental questions are related to matters of life and death. By not including a perspective sympathetic or understanding of SeaWorld's position even perhaps their attorneys, who could explain their side of legal cases included in the movie the film stops trying to tell the entire story. In that instance, I didnt feel it would affect what he was going to say.. office printer uses an average of 33.5 pages every hour if the printer is only used while the office is open, and the office is open for 50 hours each week, how many pages will the printer need over the course of 8 weeks. . Data were reviewed by an advisory board composed of two industry veteransfilmmaker and author Sheila Curran Bernard and filmmaker and professor Jon Elseand documentary film scholar Bill Nichols. 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. 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. Saying this blurry figure is not our guy would ruin the scene, said Peter Miller. Where institutional standards and practices exist, as in the news divisions of some broadcast and cablecast networks, filmmakers felt helpfully guided by them. 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. Because investigative journalism has been cut in American media, nonfiction filmmakers easily take on the duty of going out and pursuing deep investigations, Oppenheimer said. 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. Shes a real person and you cant imply something about her that never happened. , However, filmmakers balanced this concern with the need to resell their footage to make a living and considered appropriate decision making part of maintaining their professional reputations. A funny thing happened over the past decade in the short subject documentary space: It became competitive. 5 7 11 17. 25. an automobile factory produces 75 cars in an hour. Its a moral decision not to enter their lives to only show how poor they are, said one. The Economist reports that documentaries now make up 16 percent of the Cannes Film Festival slate, compared to about 8 percent in 2008. 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. When filmmakers face ethical conflicts, they often resolve them in an ad-hoc way, keeping their deep face-to-face relationship with subjects and their more abstract relationship with the viewers in balance with practical concerns about cost, time, and ease of production. Notably, this attitude does not extend to celebrities, whom filmmakers found to be aggressive and powerful in controlling their image. Interrogating what it means to become a "subject" in a documentary film that ultimately takes on a life and a folklore of its own, Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Filmmakers observed these principles with widely shared limitations. Concerns about documentary ethics are not new, but they have intensified over the past several years in response to changes in the industry. The movie's lesson is brutal, sad, and inescapable: Elvis Presley was a man who gave joy to a great many people but felt very little of his own, because he became addicted and stayed addicted until the day it killed him. time of the drinks were $1 each and the rest $3 each. I can sort of rationalize this, that it might be killed by a natural predator. The interview team consisted of Center for Social Media fellow and filmmaker Mridu Chandra and American University School of Communication MFA graduate student Maura Ugarte. Jon Else noted that he once changed a shot that appeared on a TV set inSing Fasterbecause it involved a Major League Baseball game, and he had determined that he could not license the footage. Furthermore, noncommercial public TV news programs explicitly placed journalistic standards above commercial mandates. Accompanying the represented sub-ject matter is the film's attitude toward its . They believe that their viewers are dependent on their ethical choices. the DP [director of photography] was sitting there, saying No, Im sure you wouldnt want to do it, but nodding his head yes. Oppenheimers film (currently streaming on Netflix and airing on PBS June 27) examines the fallout from a world that wasnt paying attention in the mid-1960s when thousands of people were killed in the Indonesian genocide many of the perpetrators and unapologetic murderers remain significant community members and political leaders in Indonesia today. what percentage of the remaining employees are in team A, what is the average of the following numbers 1, 4, 8, 17, in a retail store with 36 employees, 26 work with costumers, 11 work in the warehouse and 4 do neither. This study demonstrates the need to have a more public and ongoing conversation about ethical problems in documentary filmmaking. to figure out which of those statements could put the character at risk. The filmmaker removed an incriminating line, while keeping the general information and preserving the filmmakers interests as a creator. 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. They sometimes deal with hostile gatekeepers or powerful celebrity subjects. An independent filmmaker said that his financially strapped subjects could see that we had money to make the movie, and we were making money ourselves off their tragedy, at a time when they could not work because of dealing with [a difficult situation]. In this regard, many found institutional rules against payment to be arbitrary and even counterproductive. A documentary is something that intends to be truthful, said Richard Breyer, Syracuse University director of documentary film and history. 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 wanted to learn more about why she did the awful things . The second time, he was crying, I was crying, we were all crying. [Our subject] had one for radio; we used the audio and made a commercial [to go with the audio]. I was making a film about someone who was not loved . This baseline research is necessary to begin any inquiry into ethical standards because the field has not yet articulated ethical standards specific to documentary. 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. At our school, we define it as the luxury of time to research and present subject matter in an in-depth fashion with the rigors of journalism involved, Woelfel said. Filmmakers were acutely aware of the implications of telling a story one way rather than another. Sometimes filmmakers are constrained by contract, but far more often they are constrained by the fear that openly discussing ethical issues will expose them to risk of censure or may jeopardize the next job. what would be the next number in the following series you have to be truthful. Louis Massiah reiterated this. Controversies emerged about several documentaries. We showed her the piece first. Anonymity was important to many, especially to those working directly and currently for large organizations. In one example, interviews were given and releases were signed on condition that they garble their voice and obscure their face . I insisted that they show me the cut and when I saw that they were implying that the girl had had an abortion, I said, You have to change that. When you have a scene or moment in the film, you may realize its just a great moment, and then you realize the subject doesnt want that moment on screen. by working __________ the new employee hoped to prove that he could excel in his new position, the student offered information to his classmates under the _____________ of altruism, but in reality, the information was false, and he sought to ______________ their grades, the author has been criticized for the __________ views expressed in his book; while his words may have once been met with agreement; they are now met with disappointment. Filmmakers admitted to not telling the whole truth or concealing their motivation or their films true politics to get access to a subject or to get the scene you want to get. In one case, a filmmaker hid the fact from a political candidate that his film was about the opposing candidate. In one extreme case, for instance, the filmmaker did not protect a subject who implied that he had committed a murder. The filmmaker believed this to misrepresent the conditions of the region. The minute you start to pick and choose facts, youre making fiction. Is somebody on the soundtrack telling you what to think? within last week 6 students have dropped out of the basketball team and 2 students have dropped out of the debate tryouts. Experts say there are some easy ways to become more media literate to help audiences siphon fact and fiction in documentaries and journalism. . . That is the most deliberate falsification Ive ever done . Filmmakers identified challenges in two kinds of relationships that raised ethical questions: with subjects and with viewers. you decide what your film is going to be, you have to put your traditional issues of friendship aside. Here are the best documentary films of all time. Finally, filmmakers generally expressed frustration in two areas. Its not meant to be consumed the day its produced.. I want to always be able to send the DVD to them. Another explained, You owe them always having in your mind the power you have as a filmmaker, presenting them to millions of people. March of the Penguins (2005) Dir. A documentary goes the other way, Breyer said. We consulted with [an] immigration attorney . One filmmaker said I might hire a scholar for a day to consult with me on a script, so why cant I pay a musician whos made little money and felt exploited by white people their whole life? if both individuals start working at the same time, and each works 56 hours completing tooth canals over the course of one month, how many tooth canals will they have completed, taking issue with media reports, the president_____ that she had no plans to step down and ____________ claims that her office was guilty of corruption. In thinking about their subjects, filmmakers typically described a relationship in which the filmmaker had more social and sometimes economic power than the subject. The filmmaker decided to exclude this information from the film. He most often refers to his work as art rather than journalism. 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. As documentary production becomes more generalized, and as public affairs become ever more participatory, the question of what ethical norms exist and can be shared is increasingly important. That lack of balance and fairness is precisely the worry for some journalists and media analysts. I always decide not to use that moment, said another. 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 We want to have a human relationship with our subjects, said Gordon Quinn, but there are boundaries that should not be crossed. Unlike journalism, documentary filmmaking has largely been an individual, freelance effort.
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