Despite this, real life remains the key concern of committed documentarists, albeit that the work is harder to get commissioned and shown. Brian Woods is an award-winning filmmaker who has made important films about children, including an internationally successful exposé of China’s scandalous state orphanages (Dying Rooms, Channel 4 1995) and a film about juvenile prisoners and punishment (Kids Behind Bars, BBC1 2005). His 2006 film about the children of homeless families, Evicted,42won the BAFTA for best single documentary in that year and the Royal Television Society award for best educational feature in mainstream television, despite having aired to a small audience at the relatively late hour of 10.40 pm on BBC1. Introducing the BAFTA award, the broadcaster and journalist Janet Street-Porter made an impassioned plea for more such single documentaries to be commissioned, a plea echoed in Brian Woods’s acceptance speech.
Woods beat fellow nominee Paul Watson to that BAFTA award. Watson’s film Rain in My Heart was a harrowing film about alcoholism, widely written of as his best film to date.
It also introduced the novel feature of Watson ruminating to camera about the value and ethics of what he was filming – ‘What right do I have to film Kath’s grief and why am I asking you to watch Nigel die?’,43 he self-consciously asks. It is a cleverly contemporary device to preclude the charges of voyeurism and exploitation that have dogged Watson’s career. Most critics feel that, at least in this film, the invasions of privacy were justified:
Watson refuses to compromise with anything that remotely resembles a ‘feel-good’
moment – they are notable only by their absence – and his unflinching portrayal reveals a world that many may find difficult to watch. Two of the film’s subjects die during the filming – one of them on camera. Harrowing images of another downing red wine and battling against panic attacks, depression and a desire to self-harm are equally, if not more, excruciating. Watson also lays bare the devastating effects that alcoholism can have on a sufferer’s closest relationships, and the repulsive physical symptoms that the disease can cause. The film’s remarkable intimacy is testament to Watson’s skills and experience as a filmmaker, and certainly to his decision to self-shoot, something he has chosen to do now for six or seven years. He quickly becomes close to his subjects and is able to elicit the most revealing and insightful of responses, challenging our own preconceptions of what alcoholism is, and who alcoholics are.44
That closeness to the lives he films is Paul Watson’s signature, one he shares with many of the great documentary filmmakers. In a world where decreasing budgets often only allow a few days of filming, Watson takes as long as it takes. His 2007 film Malcolm and Barbara:
Love’s Farewell was 11 years in the making, including the earlier Malcolm and Barbara: A Love Story, broadcast in 1999. It took that long to chart the deterioration of Malcolm Pointon, a musician struck down by Alzheimer’s disease, and the effect on his life with his wife Barbara, to the time of his death. It is another painstaking and uncompromising piece of work, compassionate and important. But Watson inadvertently walked into a firestorm of con-troversy because the ITV publicity for the film concentrated on the apparent moment of death happening on film, whereas it had taken place three days later. At a time when British television was being rocked by successive tales of fakery and dishonesty, this small error
Figure 5.1
Malcolm and Barbara granted access to Paul Watson’s camera for 11 years
was blown into another scandal of epic proportions. Watson was forced to trek around the radio and TV stations defending himself against a largely confected charge of dishonesty.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he had been made ‘a scapegoat’:
I offered ITV a way of resolving this issue straight and clean, and they turned it down.
I asked to put in five words to explain absolutely that the picture you are looking at, at this moment, is not of Malcolm’s death; he did not regain consciousness and died some days later. They turned it down at that instant and came back to me much later and said
‘maybe it is a good idea and we lost time’ . . . I agree that ITV should look at itself and old farts like me, but the fact is in the end I did not set out to deceive and I will know that to my dying day . . . A trust that I have had for 11 years to film two very, very nice people enduring one of fate’s worst illnesses – that will get wrecked.45
‘Trust’ and ‘truth’ apparently stem from the same Old English word treowe, and they remain inextricably linked in British television today. But, as Chris Terrill says, truth is a construct and each filmmaker finds his own truth in the world he records. One only gets close when time is invested and the subjects’ trust won. That becomes vital to the filming of real life and when that trust is broken the truth becomes harder to get at. Filmmakers such as Paul Watson place great importance on the continued good relations with their subjects after the films have been transmitted, because that indicates whether their trust has been respected.
He says that only one of his 300 films has led to an absolute fracture of relations with its subjects: the Hooray Henrys of The Fishing Party (1985), a notorious exposure of young Thatcherite Tory hopefuls seen drinking and behaving disgracefully. The aggrieved toffs hijacked his appearance at the 2006 Sheffield Documentary Festival to complain that Watson had wrecked their lives.
Conclusion
Observational documentary cannot only observe the things and people of which we approve.
Some truths are unpalatable and some realities regrettable, but nothing should be beyond the film camera’s unremitting gaze. Watson speaks of documentary as a ‘subversive’ medium and, while that can only be one function of such films, it is vital that all real life be documented, not just the realities sanctioned by the powers that be. Filmmakers will always bring a particular perspective to bear on the things they show, and a visually literate audience is at ease with that. Occasional attempts by pressure groups or political interests to filter or censor reality and its champions need to be resisted by producers, well versed in the worlds they film and the implications of their being filmed. Just as Vertov did in the early days of the Soviet Union, Watson, Wiseman and Woods have all knowingly engaged with social realities they regret and hope to change. Wherever they shoot, they are frequently criticised for showing their subjects and societies in a bad light – Watson in Australia (for Sylvania Waters46), Wiseman in the United States, Woods in China – but there is a shared belief that the world is better for knowing, even if there is little will or way for those societies to effect change.
There is a contrary view that serious documentary has declined from its pole position on television a generation ago, not least because of its tendency to produce ‘miserabilist’
fare. It is true that films are generally made about situations where something has gone wrong, rather than gone right. We dispatch directors and crews to disasters, not to oases of
tranquillity. I once received a letter from an elderly lady in Huddersfield, complaining that we only filmed the bleak parts of her home town, never the nice suburb where she lived. She agreed it was ‘not Harrogate’ – apparently the acme of northern loveliness – but she felt Huddersfield certainly deserved a better image. Sadly there is little public taste for nice normality, unless it is being satirised by comedies such as Keeping Up Appearances.47 A series of screen shorts, Video Nation,48a successor of Video Diaries, did for a time offer self-shot snapshots of ordinary life on BBC2, but this project, along with most such material, has now naturally migrated to the web, leaving television to consistently ‘up the ante’ and emphasise the extreme to attract its dwindling audience. Cautionary continuity announce-ments demanded by nervous broadcasters and regulators – casually referred to by producers as ‘public health warnings’ – are frequently welcomed by the makers for actually recruiting an audience. Just as teenagers prefer to see an ‘18’ or ‘Restricted’ film, warnings about bad language, sex and violence attract more viewers than they discourage. It was hard not to read that same excited prurience in Mary Whitehouse’s and her National Viewers’ and Listeners’
Association’s shrill pronouncements.
The bigger challenge to the vérité tradition is not the contractions of subject, but the constructions of format, programme formulae that determine an audience’s expectations and notionally ensure their return week after week. As the next chapter explores, when television evolved from a producer’s medium to a production industry, bankable properties came to supplant the freer forms of old. Television production companies can now make more money exploiting the rights to a successful format than from its original production. In some ways, this has extended and secured the documentary, but at some cost to the higher principles of social purpose and independence the traditional purists felt animated their work. Purists versus populists remains a live argument within the industry but, as the following chapters reveal, documentary remains a live culture consistently reinventing itself to spawn new ways of observing people.
Expert briefing – shooting in observational mode
Whatever mode you are shooting in, whether or not you are the camera operator, you should to know what material you are likely to need, how it will be edited and where and by whom it will be seen. Some of the most inept footage shot is observational documentary shot without that forward planning, focus and knowledge. Whether you have an hour or a month, you should strategise your time and work out how to get the best shots in the time available. Here is a checklist of points on observational shooting:
1 Location access: If you are following a subject, s/he may enter a building or take transport where you need to accompany them, but for which you may need prior permission and/or documentation. If this has not been possible to arrange in advance, a mobile phone call while in transit may solve the problem. Even where you have permission, you want to ensure that doors are not opened by people reacting to the camera, positively or negatively, unless that is germane to your story. And you ideally do not want to always be following behind the subject, thus only seeing their back.
So the more you can run ahead and see them arrive, enter the lobby, climb the stairs, etc. the better. The essence of observational shooting is that you do not ask the subject to walk through the door again, or any of the other directorial interventions in
the flow of their life, and you normally cannot afford to make the problematic logistics of shooting part of the on-screen record.
2 Ins and outs: When it comes to the edit, you will hopefully not be dependent on all the travel shots that get you into and out of places and frequently pad films otherwise short of material. Always have in mind the need to acquire static location shots – wide shots of buildings entered, name plates on doors, general views of hotel lobbies, train stations, etc. – to use as a short-hand ‘situationer’ that can drop you into a scene.
These are all the more vital in fast-cut films that have no time for travelling or seeing scenes to their natural completion. Other shots can help you get out of scenes:
audiences clapping at meetings, handshakes and doors shutting after meetings, phones being replaced or mobiles shut at the end of calls.
3 Point of view: Following action and dialogue, you need to insert yourself into positions that give you regular intercuttable points, which ideally match the points of view of the participants. If your subject meets another person in a passageway, you should keep shooting for sound while ensuring you have at least two contrasting points of view and shots that can be used non-sync to mask cuts. If it’s a meeting or presentation, you ideally need the views from both the stage or top table and from the floor, with cutaways of people listening and wide shots – again to cover the selected cuts in recorded speech. Traditionally, observational shooting eschews any recognition of the camera, discouraging subjects from acknowledging or addressing it. Today’s more visually sophisticated populace understands that that is itself a conceit and is rarely confused by films that show their slips in vérité, with people talking to the camera, or the camera catching its own reflection. But it remains sensible practice to be consistent in the camera’s role within the film, be it passive observer or active actor.
4 Hand-held: Styles of camerawork change with fashion, like every other aesthetic, and everyone is familiar with Hollywood’s appropriation of hand-held documentary techniques to impart spurious jeopardy to carefully planned drama. It is a frequent mistake to use this opportunistically to justify constantly jerky camerawork. While you will probably be operating hand-held, the wobbly rush of camerawork on the hoof can only be justified if the camera reflects the filmmaker as an active participant in the film’s journey, be it news camera literally chasing a story or paranoid fugitive, as in
The Blair Witch Project. Even when justified, such movement can make audiences nauseous, especially when relentless. The wider the angle of lens you are operating with, the easier it is to damp the movement, but the preferred option for the film and its audience is regularly to establish operational stasis, letting action happen within a static frame. Find walls against which you can steady yourself, tables or chairs to help support the camera, anything to damp the movement and not draw attention to the camera’s operation. The camera should reflect the eye of the privileged observer, and our eyes like to settle. They also do not zoom, so the use of the zoom in vision is often unsettling and needs to be justified by a change in content or emotion, as in the clichéd zoom in on eyes when they well up.
5 Camera movement: Panning between speakers or subjects requires not just good technical operational skills, but good editorial comprehension. Listen to speech so that you anticipate the next intervention, or watch the game so that you are following the action, not always lagging behind it. Covering music requires an intrinsic feel for it, both in knowing which instrument is playing and getting the tempo right for cuts and camera moves. If you have the opportunity, familiarise yourself with the work you are covering,
so that, for instance, you know when to come off the singer for the guitar solo, or arrive on the choir as they burst into song. Poorly executed pans fail to find their end shot and focus: you should always know where such a shot is going to end before you start. Tracking and craning shots can give a filmic effect and are easier to do than some think. Few can afford specialist mounts, but use whatever is to hand: cars in the open and wheelchairs indoors, escalators in shopping centres and glass elevators in office buildings. Even semi-abstract close-ups of wheels speeding or hair blowing can be invaluable for suggesting movement, just as planes passing far overhead or the tracery they leave behind can be useful for conveying narrative movement and time passing. Conversely, top shots are useful for giving a sense of place and perspective, and it’s well worth blagging a porter to let you onto a roof.
6 Sound: Sound problems are the most common cause of documentary shoot failures.
Observational documentary presumes sync sound, so it is vital to ensure that whatever you want is also covered adequately. On-camera microphones are rarely good enough to give comprehensible speech: they are normally of low quality and have a wide angle of pick-up that tends to pick up unwanted background sounds, obviously worse the further you are from the speaker. In a lively sound ambience, where different types of event and encounter need to be recorded, a directional mic on a gun or pole mount, pointed and ideally monitored by a separate team member, is the preferred alternative.
A radio mic with a transmitter wired on the subject is the other regularly used sound source and usually the best bet, but can give poor balance in dialogue and is easily swamped in noisy environments. Although the UHF signal is more reliable than the old VHF spectrum, it can suffer from transmission interference and is subject to battery failure if in constant use. Sound overlaps and buzz tracks should be standard for anyone recording for documentary, invaluable in editing and sound mixing to cover internal cuts. Covering more complex sound, such as music, requires significant forward planning and proper multichannel cover, but a feed can often be accessed through a band’s sound desk.
7 The unexpected: The more these operational standards become routine, the better equipped you are to go with the flow, which is the essence of obs. doc. No plans involving, for example, people, weather and public transport are likely to progress smoothly; the successful shooter is an improviser. However well planned a shoot is, some anticipated things will not happen and some unexpected things will. But this can sometimes offer you gems that you had no reason to expect. Unless the camera is clearly the cause of violence or criminality, it is generally advisable to keep shooting, whatever happens. It is surprising how often the unwanted incident yields unexpected bonuses when in the edit suite, but there is no obligation to use such material. If, however, you have stopped recording, that option is unavailable.
8 The narrative: While few people now stick or aspire to the purist vérité view that commentary is an admission of failure, it is not enough to imagine that the story can be constructed in the edit and explained in voiceover. Yet that is what many do, especially without the stock constraints that film traditionally brought. Tape is relatively cheap, encouraging the inexperienced to defer judgement to the edit. The good filmmaker has an in-built intelligence that is critically aware of the likely use and value of anything being shot, and of the elements s/he needs to maximise that effect.
Each scene needs to advance the story in some way, and observational documentary
Each scene needs to advance the story in some way, and observational documentary