Filmmaker, Audience and Subject

Film maker , people ,audience
Very different forms of alliance can take shape between the three-fold interaction among (1) filmmaker,
(2) subjects or social actors, and (3) audience or viewers. One convenient way to think about this
interaction involves a verbal formulation of the three-way relationship.
The most classic formulation is I speak about them to you.
(I)
I. The filmmaker takes on a personal persona, either directly or through a surrogate. A typical
surrogate is the Voice of God commentator, whom we hear speaking in a voice-over but do
not see. This anonymous but surrogate voice arose in the 1930s as a convenient way to
describe a situation or problem, present an argument, propose a solution, and sometimes to
evoke a poetic tone or mood.
II. Another possibility is for the filmmaker him- or herself to speak, either on camera, as in
moore’s Roger and Me, or off-camera, heard but not seen, as in The Thin Blue Line (1987),
III. speaking in the first person edges the documentary form toward the diary, essay, and
aspects of avant-garde or experimental film and video.The emphasis may shift from
convincing the audience of a particular point of view or approach to a problem to the
representation of a personal, clearly subjective view of things. From persuasion the
emphasis shifts to expression.What gets expressed is the filmmaker’s own personal
perspective and unique view of things. What makes it a documentary is that this
expressiveness remains coupled to representations about the social, historical world that
are addressed to viewers.
Them
1) The third person pronoun implies a separation between speaker and subject.The I who speaks is
not identical with those of whom it speaks.
2) We as an audience receive a sense that the subjects in the film are placed there for our
examination and edification.
3) They may be rendered as rich, full-rounded individuals with complex psychologies of their own,
a tendency particularly noticeable in observational documentaries but just as often they seem to
come before us as examples or illustrations, evidence of a condition or event that has happened
in the world. This can seem reductive and diminishing, but it can also be highly compelling and
effective.
You.
Like “them,” “you” suggests a separation. One person speaks and another listens. A filmmaker speaks
and an audience attends. Documentary, in this sense, belongs to an institutional discourse or
framework.People with a particular form of expertise, documentary filmmakers, address us as members
of a general public or some specific element of it. As an audience we are typically separated from both
the act of representation and the subject of representation.We occupy a different social time and space
from either; we have a role and identity of our own as viewers and audience members that is itself a
distinct aspect of our own social persona: we attend the film as viewers, audience members, even
though part of our reason for doing so may be that the film will speak about people and issues whose
actual life experience compares or contrasts with our own.
“They” too may be husbands and wives, lawyers and accountants, students or athletes, and their actions
may prove instructive to our own in more direct ways than we expect from fiction.
“You” becomes activated as an audience when the filmmaker conveys a sense that he or she is indeed
addressing us, that the film reaches us in some way.Without this sense of activation we may be present
at but not attend to the film. Filmmakers must find a way to activate our sense of ourselves both as the
one to whom the filmmaker speaks (about someone or something else) and as members of a group or
collectivity, an audience for whom this topic bears importance. The usual means of doing this is by
recourse to techniques of rhetoric .
Rhetoric
It is the form of speech used to persuade or convince others about an issue for which no clear-cut,
unequivocal answer or solution exists.It differs from reason since logical or scientific processes have self
evident proofs and there exists only one solution.It also differs from poetic/narrative speech which aims
less to convince us and more to provide us with aesthetic experience.
Different combinations
I speak about them to you may be most common combination of the three way relationship but not
the only one. We can see various relations by the use of different pronouns.
It speaks about them/it to us: Not the work of a specific individual whom we would call
the filmmaker ,often not even the work of an instituion. It is impersonal and unindentifiable. Eg
information films (science,govt,medical) or ad films.
It/we speak about us to you: auto ethnography—indigenous people make their films and
videos about their own culture so that they can represent it to ‘US’ those who remain outside.

Filmmaker, Audience and Subject

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Filmmaker, Audience and Subject

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Filmmaker, Audience and Subject

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Film maker , people ,audience

The most classic formulation is I speak about them to you.

You might also like