Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Tim Wilson] “re: objectivity, exactly. My feeling that any documentarian who claims that objectivity even exists, much less that it applies to his or her work needs to be branded with a scarlet “C” for “Charlatan” or “I” for “Idiot” as appropriate, which will then also be supered across the center of every frame of their work. “
That’s a straw man in this scenario, IMO. We aren’t talking about the unachievable goal of being totally objective. We are talking about whether it crosses a line to edit a subject’s on camera response in a way that completely alters the way the subject answered the question. Example, say I want to make an NLE documentary and one of the people I interview is ‘Stan’, a well known person in the NLE community:
Me: Do you think Avid has some superior features to FCP X?
Stan: Yes I do. For example, it’s great in a multi-editor environment thank’s to all the editors being about to work in a single project and the integration it has with the ISIS storage. The trim mode is also great and I love the ScriptSync feature even though you have to jump through some hopes using an older version of Avid in order to get it to work with the latest version of Avid”.That’s too long of an answer for my piece (and Stan starts to meander off topic a bit with ScriptSync work arounds towards the end) so I cut it down to the following:
Stan: “Yes I do. For example, it’s great in a multi-editor environment //and// the trim mode is also great “.
It’s shorter and more to the point, but I didn’t change the gist of Stan’s answer. Before my edit Stan said he thought Avid had some superior features to X and he lists them. After my edit Stan still says he thought Avid has some superior features to X and he lists them.
But what if in the edit I cut to Stan just standing there, silently for an extended period of time as if he was struggling to find an answer? That’s not representative of the gist of Stan’s answer at all. And what if when people see the piece they go, “Man, I’d heard of Stan before and thought he knew his stuff, but he was totally clueless in that interview” so fewer people solicit Stan’s advice because they don’t think he knows what he’s talking about? Could that not be seen as injurious to Stan?
I’m not saying I think the lawsuit will win or should win because I don’t know all the facts of the case. What I am saying is that the potential for harm certainly exist and that’s why slander and libel laws exist.
To stick with my NLE doc example, if I didn’t want anyone to say anything nice about Avid I would either edit out those questions and responses entirely and/or I would only interview people that I know wouldn’t say anything nice about Avid. I wouldn’t take a positive response about Avid and edit it so it became a negative or neutral response about Avid.
I guess I look at this not as objective vs subjective (which is a totally different yet related discussion) but as crossing the line from non-fiction into fiction deceptively presented as non-fiction.
Maybe I’m just more unwilling than most when it comes to blurring lines, fudging facts and/or editing people into doing/saying things they did not do/say. Michael Moore was brought up and, to put it politely, I think he takes far too many liberties in order to create his version of reality so I don’t watch his editorials.
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[Oliver Peters] “I think it’s OK to “shape” the answers through the editing process, as long as you stay true to the intent of what was said. “
Agreed. Cut for time and/or clarity but you have to keep the substance/meaning of the moment/response intact.
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[Claude Lyneis] “If they can sue over this, what could they do to a Michael Moore documentary?”
In the US you can sue over anything so the act of suing is rather meaningless when trying to draw conclusions, it’s the outcome that matters (settled, dismissed, found in favor of the plaintiff, etc.,). And Moore has been sued many times.
[Claude Lyneis] “A documentary without a point of view, hardly seems worth watching… Often the best shots come between shots when the subject relax their guard.”
This isn’t subjects relaxing their guard though. In reality the subjects were asked a question and quickly and knowledgeably answered that question. In the documentary the subjects were asked a question and then crickets. Instead of an answer you see a clip of the subjects sitting silently (it’s really a clip of room tone being recorded from later on). The implication being that the subjects can’t/won’t readily answer the question posed to them which is patently false.
If you are manipulating the footage to adhere to your preconceived notions of what ‘should’ happen as opposed to what really happened then you are making an video editorial and/or a work of fiction, not a documentary. Ex. if you are making a Flat Earth documentary but all of your interviewees say the Earth is round you don’t ‘fix it in post’ and cut their responses up so they all say that the Earth is flat just because it’s your point of view that the Earth is flat. Go out and find people that actually say the Earth is flat.
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[Shane Ross] “This might open James O’Keefe up for lawsuits after the Acorn video…or that Planned Parenthood video by Center for Media Progress…as well.”
You can sue anyone for anything in America, but whether or not is gets traction in court is a different matter. With that being said, O’Keefe was sued and paid $100,000 to settle the case.
[Shane Ross] “LORDY…all sorts of pauses and reactions are added to reality shows that didn’t happen at the time. I’m sure someone will sue saying “
Different kettle of fish though. On reality shows the participants sign away everything because producers want to freely exercise ‘creative license’ and by now it common knowledge that the shows are manipulated into next week. There is no expectation of an accurate portrayal of events in that situation. It’s fiction w/amateur improve actors.
I remember when this first came to light a few months ago and I get as pissed thinking about it now as I was then. It’s bush league, unprofessional, disingenuous, disrespectful, and harmful to the doc making community as a whole. For docs you cut for time and you cut for clarity but you must remain true to what was shot. Even if how events unfolded doesn’t jive with how you had hopped events were going to unfold.
Docs depend on trust from subjects and trust from the viewing audience and when crap like this happens it violates that trust. It just makes it that much harder for all doc filmmakers.
Whenever I meet a producer or director for the first time I layout the ethical boundaries I have and I’ve threatened to walk away from a project when asked to fabricate things because the fictionalized version would be more ‘interesting’ than what actually happened. No dice. That’s the risk with docs. Sometimes what you are documenting isn’t all that compelling.
If you ask the subject a question and they answer it correctly, you don’t edit it so it appears they answer it incorrectly because having them be incorrect is better for the ‘story’ you are wanting to tell. F-that. You have what you have and you work w/in those boundaries. If one finds that difficult and/or too constraining then one probably shouldn’t be doing docs.
[David Roth Weiss] “The brand clearly wasn’t hurt by the film, as more guns have been sold in the last 18-months than any time in history,”
This wasn’t a gunmaker though, it was a gun rights group, so I don’t see how gun sales relate. If someone filmed a meet-up of COW users and edited it so we all looked like we didn’t know our butts from a hole in the ground the number of seats of FCP X that Apple sells isn’t relevant.
-Andrew
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In my experience even when using a mid-range nMP it will choke when it hits H.264 4K. Transcoding is your best bet.
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[Tim Wilson] “Apple hasn’t even pretended to aspire to peak status since those hilarious Super Computer ads,”
Don’t forget at the G5 Mac Pro headline, “Apple Unleashes the World’s Fastest Personal Computer—the Power Mac G5”
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/06/23Apple-Unleashes-the-Worlds-Fastest-Personal-Computer-the-Power-Mac-G5.html -
I think the biggest change is the disappearance of the RDF. Whether talking to co-workers or customers, Jobs could convince people that up was down, left was right, and that iPads are ‘magical’. He was the prefect blend of neo-hippy, ruthless capitalist, and P.T. Barnum.
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[Tim Wilson] “Howeverrrrrr…..let’s say that every industry using a 3.5mm jack drops it and flocks to this new thing: recent history makes me wonder if Apple will even bother to keep up with the standard as it evolves. See: Thunderbolt 3. “
In that vein… No one should be surprised that Apple wasn’t the first smartphone maker to remove the 3.5mm jack nor should anyone be surprised that the other phone makers went with the USB Type C port.
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[Bill Davis] “Announcing company products very close to when they are actually ready to deliver them in the real world. “
Let me know when those sweet features announced under NDA from NAB get delivered into the real world. 😉
Apple is a mixed when it comes to communication. Some products, like OS X…er MacOS and iOS get previewed regularly. X was obviously a surprise but a few months later we got road map and after than it’s been back to surprises again. Photos was talked about 6 months prior to launch to keep Aperture users from being blindsided. The nMP was announced in June and barely made it to shipping status before the end of the calendar year.
Adobe, on the other hand, is pretty consistent w/info since they went CC only. NAB and IBC usually see big-ish product features that will then be released 2-3 months down the line.
FWIW the products that seem to ‘power’ the respective companies appear to get the most regular attention from said companies.
EDIT:
On topic… The team projects seem interesting, but having to push/accept changes between editors still makes it less appealing than Avid for a multi-editor environment. With Avid you have one project where as with Adobe you still have multiple projects that have to be managed and the (mis)managing of multiple projects is always where the mistakes come from.
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[Dennis Geraghty] “They set the hook and then pull hard.”
???
You signed up for a limited time discount only offered to CS 5 or CS 6 customers and now that the discount rate has expired you are getting billed at the normal, non-discount price Adobe has been changing everyone else since they went CC-only. I fail to see anything nefarious here. The only thing that seems weird is that you got the discount rate for 2yrs when, I thought, any discounts like that were only good towards the first year of CC.