A few days ago I attended the annual public outreach day hosted by the Grand Rapids Public Museum called “Anishinabe Culture Day.” Besides the booths and tables here and there with traditional craft and art makers, school curriculum options for Native American studies, and representatives of organizations of and for Native Americans around the state of Michigan, there were a few performances. One was a drum circle, Southern Straight, who accompanied many dancers wearing clothing for some of the types of dance that are customarily done on particular occasions.
This image comes from a friend overseas who has considerable documentary and TV production experience. He points out my framing leaves out part of the circle that the dancers follow. The video clip runs long enough for each person to move out of the frame, but then enter the frame once more as the circle comes around again. Besides the clipped frame (above), he also suggests a 2-camera set-up so that drummers get good coverage and so do the dancers. Of course, with a bigger production crew, prior authorization (permissions granted), and more equipment to record and more time to edit, a truly cinematic representation should be possible. On the other hand, setting very modest expectations and opting for minimal presence and least gear, there is still some value to be captured by documenting a subject and then sharing it widely. Seeing my friend’s professional approach and contrasting it to my own habits of seeing and recording, I began to articulate my Modus Operandus, my M.O.
Summed up in one phrase, my way of using moving images to document contemporary scenes and settings can be called “streamlined video vignettes.” It is streamlined because the gear fits into a pocket: small camera (in this case iPod Touch), microphone (plug-in to the iPod base). It is vignettes because each clip is ideally a single take that is a self-contained statement or description of the subject. By trusting to luck and intending to set the recording to start/stop at the right moment, there is very little fine trimming left to do later on the computer due to this method of in-camera editing. As for established documentary makers and their styles, it is the observational style of Frederick Wiseman with little or no intrusion by narrator or subtitles that influences my own “one man, one camera, one take” approach. In some cases that works well. But for complicated subjects and timelines with many viewpoints and voices, a much bigger plan and post-processing is needed to do justice to the subject.
Thinking back to some of the early moving pictures used to record distant people and places, “Trance and Dance in Bali,” comes to mind by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in the 1930s on black and white 16mm silent film (released only in 1952). They had few precedents or models to guide them, but some of the hallmarks of what has come to be Ethnographic Film and Video (part of the larger study of Visual Anthropology) can be seen in the old flickering scenes. There are relatively long sequences made at the observer’s eye-level. The lens is neither far away (spy camera style) nor too crowded into the subject (action camera, reality TV style of the recent generation).
Their main purpose in Bali involved observing, interviewing and taking notes, and recording photos. The movie camera was a novelty to experiment with, an unknown quantity in the total equation of the fieldwork task of answering some research questions while also capturing something of the people, places, and things in the local meaning within the cultural landscape of words, artifacts, and ideas held within living memory. My streamlined vignette style, akin to video bloggers’ “run and gun” style, is consonant with Trance and Dance because the recording is incidental to what the people in front of the lens are doing (the camera is secondary, they are primary; not the other way around). Visually capturing scenes around the society in this selective and relatively casual, unintrusive way is meant to leave behind short pieces of interest to the subjects themselves today, but also for others locally or in far-away places online now and in years to come.
By contrast to Trance and Dance, “Nanook of the North,” by Robert Flaherty (1922) involved certain antiquated clothing and customs, as well as some scripting of a dramatic arc for the protagonist in the 1920s Arctic, but he depicted a plausible story from a generation or more earlier as imagined by the director (who also filmed, edited, and produced it), and acted by local people. While this approach suited wider audiences than Trance and Dance, Nanook loses the archival value to researchers when compared to the unmanipulated observational style.
Even after 15 years of making video clips for personal and professional use, I still see the world with the eyes of a still photographer, not the mind of a videographer who strings multiple segments into longer sequences and who gives care to sound quality and lighting. This is another reason why the “one man, one camera, one take” comes naturally to me. A single video clip framed and then trimmed to start and stop just long enough to capture the moment is a kind of snapshot of moving parts rather than an extended narrative, meditation, or reportage.
In the consumer economics classroom students learn that “opportunity cost” is what you pay by choosing (or being forced by circumstances) to do A instead of B; it is the cost of the lost opportunity of doing-A that is given up for doing-B. Likewise, in the video working process there are gains and losses when using masses of gear versus using minimalist gear. Quality and control (sound and image) and durability often come with fancier equipment. But the price to pay comes in the form of more weight, more complexity (more moving pieces that could fail), bigger learning curve, and bigger expense. On the other side, the light-weight approach may give good-enough visual and audio quality, but not the highest production values that delight audiences.
What is gained by the small technological footprint or form-factor is flexibility: no need to house and feed a crew on location (or even 1 extra pair of hands if the budget is for just 2 or 3 others). You have less outlay of time (learning the gear) and money (cost of lease or purchase) up front, but also after recording is done and editing begins. Little or no editing means that there is more time and energy left to promote the recorded material via social media, personal networks of mail and email, and by word of mouth, too. Of course, both kinds of movie, the high budget and low budget finished work — whether 5 minutes or a full hour should be well promoted. But with the smaller production the whole cycle from record to edit to promotion is very condensed. There is inertia from this quick lifecycle.
Taking the analogy of postcard versus letter versus essay manuscript, there is something similar in scale of production for “streamlined video vignette” compared to longer documentaries. According to the project, one approach is suited better than the other. And so, by clinging to the “one man, one camera, one clip” approach for documenting the social landscape, there will be many subjects that are just too complex or too vast altogether to contemplate and investigate. But still there are many other subjects and events that do fit into the “one take” pattern of video recording, or sometimes better yet, sometimes the subject is best documented and communicated to others as a still image or photo essay instead of one or more video clips.
Particularly when the subject is people on stage, or even people going about their business — not considered in the public eye, then the only way to do a deep and serious documentary is to build up a relationship and rapport with those framed by the camera. By contrast, for a casual video clip (with permission if on stage; without if it is a public happening without the expectation of privacy that is present customarily for personal ceremony or transactions) no relationship-building or rapport is needed — sort of like the “street photography” style of walking the street in search of juxtaposed dramatic, incongruous, or humorous moments to point and shoot and capture, often partly by luck.
Perhaps an answer to the question about how much effort, equipment, and editing is needed to attract and hold an audience depends on the nature of the subject and relationship to the viewer. An urgent or high-stakes subject may require a bigger commitment by viewers; that is, even low quality or worse will be acceptable when it is the only form of visual record available, salvaged from a disaster or news event. For more ordinary subjects, a poor quality of sound or visual material may fail altogether to attract the interest of an audience. Old family photos or early photographs may be studied lovingly for a long time, while a high-quality picture of something unremarkable from everyday life may be given just a passing glance.
In conclusion, so long as I remain committed to the “streamlined video vignette” approach to documenting episodes seen and heard in the ebb and flow of modern life, and so long as I do not stray into projects that require a bigger crew and bigger commitment, the results should be satisfying and usable to researchers and for the general public, as well. And by spelling out the boundaries for streamlined vignettes it becomes easier to say yes and no to thoughts that arise for what to record next.
