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This handbook is intended for those wanting to use documentary filmmaking as a research method to explore subjects and also as a way of expressing ideas. Its focus is practical rather than technical, aiming to complement the many handbooks that already exist covering filmmaking, digital videography, sound recording and video editing. It concentrates on aspects of filmmaking for research purposes at an introductory level that are not so well documented elsewhere, such as the practical stages involved in the production of an ethnographic film. The underlying principal of this handbook is to broaden the application of ethnographic filmmaking to suit a wide range of research areas and documentary expression, encompassing sensory, fictive, observational, participatory, reflexive, performative and immersive modes of storytelling. I have chosen to avoid detailed discussion of technology as this dates quickly. This handbook aims to assist individuals in their personalised searches using online facilities to develop research methods and also teaching, by decoding technical terminology and explaining filmmaking workflows.
This chapter considers the work of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), established at Harvard University in 2006 and which has had a dramatic impact both inside and beyond the academy. Initially, the institutional context and the ideas informing the work of the SEL are described. This work is very diverse and constantly innovative, making generalisation perilous. But allowing for numerous possible exceptions, it is suggested that there are various continuities between their praxis and that of their institutional predecessor, Robert Gardner. These are particularly evident in the attention given to visual aesthetics and to sound editing, and in the generally high technical quality of their films. Also as in Gardner’s work, both language and concern for communicating what the subjects think or feel about the world are of secondary importance. There is typically even less interest in relating those beliefs or sentiments to social relations, politics or culture. It is argued that in these regards their work, collectively, is set upon a trajectory carrying them progressively away from the conception of ethnography on which this book is based. These propositions are then explored in relation to some of the best-known works produced by the SEL prior to 2015.
of Pelias) and its attempt at modernising the narrative, for some it simply ‘retold the story of the 1963 film at twice the length and with less than half the charm’ (Richards, 2008: 170). Here, the show evidently did not take advantage of the opportunities provided by the serial format and merely extended the action rather than aiming for narrative complexity. In 2002, TNT got in on the act with its Julius Caesar (dir. Uli Edel), another two-part miniseries. The show received two Emmy nominations, for make-up and sound editing. It focused on Caesar’s early years
devoted to the soundtrack. The 1980 Yale French Studies special issue on sound edited by Rick Altman was a key early work (about half of it dedicated to music), as was the work of the French theorist Michel Chion (whose foundational 1980s work has been translated by Claudia Gorbman; see Chion, 1994 and 1999 ). Scholarship in this area has expanded rapidly as specialists in musicology and Film Studies have explored it, and the
credits, which always feature a long list of names related to sound editing. This took place, along with the picture editing, not at the NFB but in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the EDC was based. 4 In an aesthetic sense, the films are very low-key: the general style is one of muted observational realism. But this effect has been brought about by very skilful authoring. The framing and exposure is generally immaculate and there are no self-conscious manifestations of
classical cinema was to confirm Soviet anxieties about the hegemonic power of theatrical and naturalistic modes of expression, the introduction of optical sound technology also opened up two new strands of sonic practice that were to have a profound influence on the soundscape of the twentieth century: the first of these was synthesis, the second was sound editing. The primary creative opportunity that sound editing affords
two parallel and related strands of sonic practice that were to have a profound influence on the soundscape of twentieth-c entury western art: the first of these was sound editing (dealt with in Chapter 6 ), the second, sound synthesis. As has already been demonstrated by the example of ground noise, film technology generates as well as reproduces sound. The sig-nificance of the conceptual shift from reproduction to
Barrett’s entrance into the bedroom. The silence persists until Susan leaves the house, experiencing another uncomfortable encounter with Barrett on the way. As he opens the door for her, the children’s laughter starts up again, but now carries a sense of mockery. In Pinter’s direction, Susan leans against a lamp post outside ‘Suddenly looking lost.’ 37 The unorthodox sound edits bring an almost supernatural element to the ‘uneasy silence’ briefly mentioned in Pinter’s script. The choreography of the two characters throughout this sequence and
styles outlined above. In reference to Su excelencia, el mayordomo/His Excellency, the Butler (Miguel Iglesias, 1942), he writes that Luis Prendes’ performance is ‘desenvuelta y a tono con el matiz de vodevil que marca la cinta’ [relaxed and in keeping with the spirit of farce that defines the film] (Mas-Gunidal [1943a]). This attitude is much more patent in the subsequent reviews by Pazos, the majority of which devote greater space to Spanish films and are divided into sections regarding storyline, dialogue, sound, editing, music, cinematography, mise
-en-scène, costume, performance, lighting, music, dialogue, sound, editing and cinematography. Indeed, it would seem that the swiftness with which we can grasp the significance of filmic figures leads to an underestimation of the work required to do so, what Robert Stam ably describes as ‘intense perceptual and conceptual labor – the work of iconic designation, visual deciphering, narrative inference and construction – inherent in [viewing] film.’62 It might be argued that the problems of Wartenberg’s model could be solved by replacing his meta-critical vocabulary of
