Professional Practise
By Ainsley Brooks
Ethical Issues
It is our responsibility to follow the University's Policy on the ethical conduct of research and knowledge transfer and any relevant academic or professional codes of practice and guidelines pertaining to the Documentary.
How do Documentaries represent the world? The bond between documentary and the historical world is deep and profound. Documentary adds a new dimension to popular memory and social history. Documentary engages with the people of the world by representing it. They do this in three different ways.
1. They offer us a likeness or depiction of the world that bears a recognisable familiarity. They usually do this through audio and visual recording devices to record the situations and events with great fidelity, we see in documentaries people, places, and things that we might also see for ourselves, outside the cinemas.
“An image cannot tell everything we want to know about what happened” – Introduction to Documentary, Page 42
“Images can be altered both during and after the fact by both conventional and digital techniques” – Introduction to Documentary, Page 42
2. Documentaries stand for or represent the interests of others. In a participatory democracy, each individual participates actively in political decision making rather than relying on a representative.
3. Documentaries may represent the world in the same way as a lawyer, they document the clients “case” for a particular interpretation of the evidence before us. In this sense documentaries do not simply stand for others, representing them in ways they could not do for themselves, but rather they more actively make a case or propose an interpretation to win consent or influence option.
Research (Taken from True Stories: Documentary...)
The definitions of the key terms docudrama and mock-documentary – and to mount a defence of the forms against common accusations of “poor art” and “dubious ethics” –True Stories: Documentary, page 12
“The true story is all about this cultural compulsion (usually offended up as ‘natural’) to be ‘shaken’ by the ‘truth’, in an apparently endless soap opera of desperate deeds and heroic endurance” “Documentary drama will be used to describe the full range of dramatic practices in which the true story invokes the special power of the document” – page 42
Ethical Issues within Documentary
"The ethical conflicts put in motion by these features of a filmmaker’s embattled-truth-teller identity are, ironically for a truth-telling community, unable to be widely shared or even publicly discussed in most individual cases. Sometimes filmmakers are constrained by contract, but far more often they are constrained by the fear that openly discussing ethical issues will expose them to risk of censure or may jeopardize the next job".
(www.centerforsocialmedia.org)
There has been controversies emerge in a number of Documentaries because they lacked in evidence and didn’t always tell the ‘truth’ by twisting what was presented. |
Staging, restaging, and effects
Centre for Social Media mentions how many filmmakers restage routine or trivial events such as walking through a door was part and parcel of the filmmaking process and was “not what makes the story honest.”
However they go on to talk about how many filmmakers went much further, without discomfort. Filmmakers also regularly used re-creations “re-staging of events that have already occurred, whether in the recent or distant past”, although they widely believed that it was important that audiences be made aware somehow that the footage is recreated. Stanley Nelson said some filmmakers also “stage” events to occur at a time convenient to the filming. This comforts again that everything shown isn’t always the truth, yes they might have re-staged it but it doesn’t show 100% what really happened and how can we be truth what is shown to us is the truth?
When it comes to editing the use of distortions are often "necessary to tell the story or to compress ideas that would otherwise take too long. Jump cuts might be more “honest” about the rearranging going on but might be unwatchable. Dialogue editing and reaction shots are necessary tools of documentary, and while sometimes manipulative, often fall under Picasso’s idea of art as the lie that makes us realise the truth".
How will I apply this?
For our Documentary, I plan on using some of these techniques, using different angles and shots to show what is happening. As the DoP I will be filming our Documentary on a HD Sony camera, the reason behind this is to show the emotions more in the people we interview. I want to focus on their physical and facial expression and look at how they feel awkward and start to panic when we ask them uncomfortable questions. I will stick to the University rules and would like to keep to the Ofcom rules, of course I want to show both the positive and negative side, I want to so only the ‘truth’ so whether we capture the ‘negative’ side is another story, we will manipulate them at times to get the response we want showing our themes of greed, obsession, gambling and so on.
Industry codes of practice
An 'industry codes of practice' is a written guideline sheet issued by an official body or a professional association to its members to help them comply with its ethical standards and the required paper work needed in order for the documentary to pass.
Ofcom: I firstly looked at Ofcom (the Office of Communications) they are a company who regulates the content of all television and radio programmes in the UK they monitored all channels including the BBC and Channel 4, they have complaint services where viewers can phone or e-mail if they want to complain about something shown. Ofcom operates the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (“the Code”) which contains rules and principles covering standards in programmes, sponsorship and fairness and privacy. |  Image: www.ofcom.org.uk/ |
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Chapter06.pdf Size : 132.028 Kb Type : pdf |
BBC: I looked on the BBC website after to see what their rules and advice was to filmmakers. They said that "This Code of Conduct constitutes the BBC’s commitment to licence fee payers for all publicly funded services in the UK. |  Image: www.bbc.co.uk/ |
Copyright and Licensing
Copyright and licensing is in place to help protect companies and their work, it is also in place to help respect the rights of copyright owners so only they can use the material.
Music:
Music plays a huge part in any film or documentary because it is so powerful and can influence the spectator’s mood, option and emotion on what they see on screen. There are a number of ways in getting royalty free music . You can either create the music yourself if you know how to play, there is also lots of free material on Garage Band which you can edit together yourself to create music or just for Foley. Another option is to contact the author, however there is a chance a small fee will be required. If not there are copyright-free websites for music such as:
Getty Images - www.gettyimages.co.uk/music
AKM Music - www.akmmusic.co.uk
Photos:
There are many websites that offer 'no license' photos. For example 'Getty Images' (http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/) is a website that offer this service with thousands of photos to choose from. We used a photo from this website for one of our posters we created. We will be using a SLR next semester during filming so we can take our own stills. However, we may decide to use this website again in time if we want to create alternative posters/ logos.
Archive Footage:
http://www.archive.org/details/stock_footage
There are loads of websites offering free footage (see the example above) which can be used to find footage and show the 'history', something we can't do, however there are rules that you can only use a maxium of 30 seconds at a time (free) any longer you must pay the copyright owner for using the material.
Required paperwork
Release forms:
These must be signed as evidence that the person on camera agreed to participate in the film, they must sign and date the release form for it to be valid.
Location release forms:
Much like the release form, this form is used to provide evidence that we had permission to film at the location/ property. The form must be signed and dated to be valid.
H&S forms:
Health and safely "risk assessment" forms are important to minimise the risks which may occur. They should be filled in before the shoot, they are used to identify the hazards, what the production company are doing to minimise the risks and how they will control and communicate this to both the primary and onlookers.
How will I apply this?
As a group we will apply this by having all the required paperwork ready in advance, we will have the health and safely forms filled in before we visit the locations. We will also ensure we have permission from everyone who appears in our film by asking them to sign our release forms. I have created my own release form for our company (see photo essay page)
When we arrive at our filming locations we will ask the manager at both Brighton Greyhound Stadium and Green Hall Birmingham Stadium to sign our form and any rescue centres we visit, we will also send them a copy via email beforehand to save us time.
