This chapter discusses the varied historical and epistemological conceptions of ethnographic film, from the idea of films conceived as museum collections, to so-called ‘illustrated lectures’, to films made as visual equivalents of written ethnographies, and films that explore the performative, emotional and underlying cultural patterns of human societies. The pros and cons of several approaches are considered, along with their different methodologies. Among these are the various forms of observational cinema, ranging from films focusing on the filmmaker’s immediate observations, to those using narrative methods, to those creating more multi-level structures. The chapter describes how some films extend existing filmic possibilities in the temporal and sensory realms, in their uses of narrative, in emphasising thematic elements, and in combining several of these approaches in the same film. The author concludes that if ethnographic filmmaking is to develop its full potential, no single approach can be held up as the only legitimate one.
Filmmakers are frequently called upon to film in small communities, where the objective may be as much to convey the unique character of the community as the individuals within it. Following on from the previous chapter, the author describes in detail the history of making the Doon School film series in India. He discusses the various approaches required to convey the intertwined personal, physical and social aspects of the subjects’ lives. In some cases this involved the simultaneous layering of several different cultural and social patterns. The author concludes that only through such complex structures can films represent social experience in ways that transcend those of written texts.
Films are born out of ideas and hard work, but also out of the energies and emotional lives of their makers. This chapter discusses the range of emotions experienced by filmmakers when making films, as they undergo sensations of pleasure, empathy, delight, worry, frustration and sometimes a divided consciousness. Documentary filmmaking also allows filmmakers to cross the borders of culture, class, age and gender as they record the lives of others. Referring to his own experiences and those of such filmmakers as Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Basil Wright, the author links the feelings of filmmakers to the films they produce, exploring the challenges they face along the way.
This chapter discusses the potential of children to use filmmaking to explore aspects of their communities from their own unique perspective as children. Based on the ‘Childhood and Modernity’ video workshop project in India, the author (who directed the project) describes how children responded to the opportunity to film the subjects they had chosen, and the unusual films that resulted from it. With no previous experience of documentary filmmaking, they often invented new ways of using the camera, producing films and filming styles clearly marked by their own personalities. An unexpected aspect of the project was the extent to which some children identified with their cameras as confidants and friends.
In ethnographic filmmaking, visual images, both singly and in combination, make sense in a variety of ways through their uses in description, analysis, interpretation and explanation. These uses rely on the ability of the filmmaker to guide the viewer’s understanding and the viewer’s ability to read the filmmaker’s intentions. This chapter uses an example from the author’s Tempus de Baristas (1993), a film on the life of shepherds in Sardinia, to examine the methods and ramifications of filming a single scene in an ethnographic film.
This chapter explores how documentary films represent the character and life experiences of others. Biographies and autobiographies have their counterparts in documentary cinema, but there are also profound differences between them. Rather than trying to convey a whole life, films more often focus on a narrow segment of their subjects’ lives, and they frequently involve close personal encounters between filmmaker and subject. The author discusses a number of film portraits and the means by which filmmakers portray others through observing their lives and interacting with them directly. A selection of documentary films provides examples for discussion, including several by the author.
This chapter considers the pragmatics and nuances of film editing, particularly in editing documentary films. Film editing is about arranging segments of film, beginning with the arrangement of individual shots into scenes and ending with the arrangement of scenes into entire films. These arrangements produce different meanings at both an emotional and an intellectual level. Here the author discusses the role of juxtaposition, linking, continuity, timing, rhythm, punctuation and other factors in film editing, drawing upon examples from his own films, those of other filmmakers, and the ideas and methods of the British film editor and writer Dai Vaughan.
Documentary filmmaking and ethnographic filmmaking have spawned a wide range of practices, but until fairly recently most documentaries have relied on techniques used in making fiction films, with each scene acted out for the camera. Observational filmmaking has diverged from this in its attempts to film spontaneous human behaviour rather than re-enactments of it. It also emphasises the role of the filmmaker as an observer, sharing this perspective with the viewer. Taking the example of the author’s filming at a boarding school in India, this chapter outlines the observational filmmaker’s approach to filming others, beginning with the initial motivation, entry into a community, the finding of protagonists, the filmmaker’s behaviour while filming and the practical and human difficulties that arise in the process.
Most documentary films must be approached with careful planning, since the potential for disaster is very great. The challenge is therefore to keep the percentage of disaster to a minimum. In some ways this approach is a salvage process, for a film is ultimately the outcome of what one hoped to do, what one discovered along the way and what one was actually able to film. Typically there are two main sorts of disaster. The first results from a failure of intelligence or bad luck and the unpredictability of events. The second results from breakdowns in filming technology, perhaps the most vulnerable point in the filmmaking process. With the detachment of hindsight, the author describes the various filmmaking disasters he has experienced and, as an encouragement to others in similar circumstances, how they were overcome.
In documentary films both the filmmaker and the viewer are observers, with the viewer observing the filmmaker’s observations. In observational cinema, to a greater extent than in other documentary forms, filmmakers attempt to give the audience access to their position as observers. The problem remains, however, of how to render the deeper significance of what is observed, and this may require filming strategies more commensurate with the complexity of life itself. The view that a simple camera recording gives the most accurate representation of social life is misleading in that it ignores this underlying complexity. Rather, it is the filmmaker’s structuring of his or her observations that allows a film to reveal more accurately the depth of human experience. This in turn requires certain arts on the part of the filmmaker, which can be called the arts of observation, adaptation, construction, allusion and performance. The chapter uses the example of the author’s film Gandhi’s Children (2008) to demonstrate how each of these arts may be employed.