Renewing Ethnographic Film MacDougall

Renewing Ethnographic Film: Is Digital Video Changing the Genre?Author(s): David MacDougallSource: Anthropology Today, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 15-21Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2678157Accessed: 23/02/2010 18:34

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Renewing ethnographic film

Is digital video changing the genre?

DAVID MACDOUGALL David MacDougall was one of the co-founders of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, where he is currently an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and Convenor of the Program in Visual Research Across Cultures. A book of his essays, Transcultural Cinema, was published by Princeton University Press in 1998. David MacDougall's first major film, To live with herds, won the Grand Prix Venezia Genti at the Venice Film Festival in 1972. Other films, many co-directed with Judith MacDougall, include a trilogy on the Turkana of northwestern Kenya. From 1975 to 1987 he made twelve ethnographic documentaries with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. In 1991, with Judith MacDougall, he made Photo Wallahs about local photographers in northern India. In 1992 he went to Sardinia to make Tempus de baristas (1994) about three generations of mountain shepherds. Since 1997 he has been conducting a study of The Doon School in northern India. His email is David.MacDougall@anu. edu. au

Among the filmmakers I know, one of the most frequently asked questions these days is: 'What do you think of video?' Soon followed by, 'Has video changed the way you work?' And it's true that many former filmmakers are now videomakers, by choice or by necessity. These ques- tions have particular relevance for visual anthropology, since the making of ethnographic films on film seems to have come to a dead end. But with the advent of video, and after a long period of stasis and stagnation, new directions seem to be emerging in ethnographic filmmaking.1 There are indications of this at recent film festivals, where many of the films, particularly by younger anthropologists, reveal a greater willingness to experiment with anthropo- logical ideas and with the medium. Part of this renewal can be put down to impatience with the didacticism that has characterized visual anthropology and its aspirations in the

past. It may also be due to shifts in the interests of anthro-

pologists, away from descriptions of discrete 'cultures' and toward issues of social experience and identity in a

globalizing and post-colonial world. But, as has happened several times in the past - in the 1930s with the coming of

sound, in the 1960s with the new synchronous cameras and recorders - the change may also be due to the arrival of a new technology. That this might occur was recently pointed out by Paul Henley, who noted that 'a fortuitous combination of changing theoretical paradigms within

anthropology and recent technological developments is

finally giving rise to conditions that could result in the

widespread adoption of filmmaking as an important medium of ethnographic research' (Henley 2000: 209).

For at least three decades, most ethnographic filmmaking in Britain and North America has been committed to the

agendas of television and education, rather than to opening up new areas of anthropological research. The exceptions are cases in which cameras have been used to gather visual data of rituals, body movements, technological processes and the like for later analysis, but this hardly amounts to

ethnographic filmmaking as a form of professional dis- course. There have been few ethnographic films that could be described as constituting original research in anthro-

pology. To many anthropologists this has perhaps never even seemed possible, and in such an atmosphere few young anthropologists have been willing to commit themselves to such a perilous career path. And yet, many of the areas of research that have attracted anthropological interest during this period are those in which ethnographic film arguably has its greatest potential. It is perhaps uniquely suited to

analysing visible cultural forms, the immediacy of indi- vidual experience, human relationships with the material

world, and social interactions in all their evolving and mul- tivalent complexity. If visual anthropology has yet to make

many significant contributions in these areas, the reasons

may lie as much in a lack of opportunity as in the adoption of inappropriate filmic models from the marketplace.

Video has been with us a long time - the National Film Board of Canada's 'Challenge for Change' project was

using reel-to-reel black and white video in the 1960s. Betacam and Beta SP have been widely used in documen-

tary and ethnographic film production since the 1980s. The difference today is digital video, which has made it pos- sible to produce high-quality images from very small cam- eras, some not much larger than a cigarette packet. Coupled with this is desktop computer editing, which has obviated

the need to rely on expensive on-line video studios. The question: 'What do you think of video?' usually

assumes a prior experience with 16mm filmmaking, and often with what might be called the industrial model of

documentary film production. Typically, filmmakers have worked in crews, or at a minimum in pairs, and have had to rely upon large budgets obtained from television net-

works, philanthropic foundations or government funding agencies. Now for the first time it has become possible to make a professional-looking film largely on your own, shooting it yourself and editing it in your home or office. Not everyone, obviously, is capable of doing so, but for those with the talent and tenacity, it can be done. This sig- nificantly challenges the power of the professional film-

making establishment, with its customary financial

backing, administrators, directors and specialist techni- cians. It turns the responsibility back upon us, the anthro-

pologists and filmmakers, to accept the challenge to

produce new, exemplary ethnographic films. The same things were being said (it will be objected)

three decades ago about Super8 film, and a decade ago about Hi-8 video. Very little in ethnographic film changed as a result of those technical innovations. Formulas drawn from television and the educational film continued to dom- inate the genre. Ethnographic film festivals such as Cin?ma du R?el increasingly showed films aimed at tele- vision and based on newsworthy topics or social issues, often structured primarily around interviews. Yet ironi-

cally, some of the best ethnographic films of the time came out of television, as a result of filmmakers challenging establishment television on its own ground.2

The difference now is that digital video offers a realistic alternative to 16mm and the professional video formats, whereas Super8 (championed by Ricky Leacock) and Hi- 8 were difficult to edit and technically marginal. They were both considered substandard for television broadcast, and few films made in either format were taken up by film distributors. Professional support for both formats was minimal and gradually dwindled to nothing. There were fewer and fewer processing laboratories and studios that could handle them. The problem was that although these formats made low-cost production available to film-

makers, post-production became a nightmare. There was

really no equivalent to today's nonlinear desktop editing, which can take raw footage and carry it through to a video master complete with titles, effects and mixed soundtrack.

^*&

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001 15

Some recent examples A number of films shown at recent ethnographic festivals

give promise of the new independence made possible by digital video. Each exhibits experimentation in its construc-

tion, a special level of intimacy with its subject, and a broad-

ening concept of what a work of visual anthropology can be.

Ingeborg Solvang's Yesterday - a girl, tomorrow - a woman recently won the student prize at the G?ttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival. The film contains

unusually intimate observations of women's lives in a

family attempting to maintain its decaying social position in a provincial Bolivian town. The film, although technically rough, is rich in detail and irony, especially in the awkward

ceremony in which Ginny, the girl of the title, finally emerges as a new adult. One feels this film could only have been made by a single filmmaker, a confidant of the family, and a student of the complex factors of class, economics and

gender politics underlying the family's situation. Several other films shown at G?ttingen indicate the

vigour with which ethnographic filmmakers are using the new technology. Among them was a group of films from the visual anthropology programme being developed at Yunnan University in southwest China.3 In Qing, the news-

paperman by Yi Sicheng, the focus is on the instability of the main subject's social status, but rather than belabouring this in didactic fashion, the film studies it through a series of carefully observed scenes ranging from private conver- sations to a public performance. By contrast, Khalfan and

Zanzibar, by Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti and ?kos

?st?r, makes a virtue of didacticism, using the flexibility of

digital editing to run lines of text across the screen and jux-

tap?se unlikely segments of material. Another recent film, La m?moire dure by Rossella

Ragazzi, was shown at the 10th Rassegna Internazionale di Documentari Etnografici in Nuoro, Sardinia. It follows several children in a special class for ?migr?s who have

recently arrived in Paris. Ibrahim, Alpha, Isaak and Mang Mang are all castaways in a strange land, struggling to learn a new culture and language and beset by traumatic memories from their past. For them memory is 'dure' -

but it also resists, survives, endures. It is what their new

learning requires of them. The film enters gently into their daily lives and that of their teacher, examining moments of development in real time, such as the girl Mang Mang repeatedly attempting to read the word 'hel-

icopter'. Here the qualities of digital filmmaking are not

secondary to the film's meaning but central to the film- maker's ability to give us access to the experiences and

responses of the children. These films suggest that digital cameras and editing

have expanded the resources available to ethnographic filmmakers. To test this you would perhaps have to watch the filmmakers at work, but their testimonies can tell us a lot. 'Has video changed the way you work?' My encoun- ters with other filmmakers, and my own experiences, point to a number of significant changes, although not always those one might expect.

Filmmakers predictably mourn the loss of the projected film image. They also fear that the disciplines they learnt in using 16mm film are being lost. Video tape is so cheap that it may encourage filmmakers to shoot first - exces-

sively, in the hope of capturing everything - and think later. This has not been my experience, nor that of most of

my colleagues. If anything, I shoot more carefully now than ever before, perhaps because I am less distracted by technical matters (is the film running out, is the f-stop cor-

rect?) and can give fuller attention to the qualities and con- tent of the image. Another factor may be that leaving film behind creates an obstinate desire to preserve filmic values. As for the film image itself, two considerations assume importance. First, apart from screenings at a few film festivals, hardly any 16mm productions will be seen on anything but a television screen, either broadcast or, in more degraded form, as VHS vid?ocassettes. Second, video projection has improved so dramatically that images produced by small digital cameras now look astonishingly bright and detailed, even in large theatres. We can expect that before long high-definition video will look even

better, so that documentary images, for the first time since the 1930s (when 35mm was the norm), will once again be

technically equivalent to those of feature films. We can also expect digital video discs (on which feature films are now widely distributed) to replace VHS cassettes once

documentary distributors start using this format.

Working alone But these are technical matters. A more important question is what have been the methodological and intellectual con-

sequences when filmmakers turn to video. One evident

change has been in the number of filmmakers working alone. One-person filmmaking has always been possible, but the difficulties of managing both a camera and syn- chronous sound recorder have discouraged it. Although recording good sound remains a problem, it has become more feasible with the new video cameras. This has

brought the ethnographic filmmaker's situation closer to that of the classical anthropological fieldworker, engaged in participant-observation. It has also brought ethnographic filmmaking closer to the ideal of a more personal cinema

envisaged by the 'direct cinema' filmmakers of the 1960s. The implications of one-person filmmaking are wide-

ranging. A single person tends to be perceived as an indi-

Mang Mang, in the film La m?moire dure by Rossella Ragazzi.

Ic?O; The Oiiiarii ?Juiim? inalitj 2m&Jm?im&%

JSZ~.'-&i'. .J ^j?:< A scene from the film Khalfan and Zanzibar by Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti and?kos ?st?r with a 'crawling ' title.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001

vidual, whereas even two people working together consti- tute a 'team', with all the associations of an institutional-

ized, corporate statement this carries. Furthermore, the smaller digital cameras are regarded, at least for the

present, as amateur cameras. In public places, they are associated more with tourism than with film production. This perception carries over into the private realm, where someone with a video camera is viewed more as a person pursuing personal or local interests than wider institutional ones. As more people use cameras of their own, amateur cameras increasingly become associated with the idea of 'for us' rather than 'for them'.

These changes inevitably affect the relationship of the

subject to the filmmaker. Anyone can make the filming process intrusive and awkward, and conversely, a team of filmmakers can often establish a close and informal rela-

tionship with their subjects. It is nevertheless true that there is a different tone to a relationship established with an individual than with a group, even if the group is only two. I believe this is partly because a film crew, or even a

pair of filmmakers, is seen as having its own internal social

dynamic, from which the subject feels, however gently, excluded. As a single individual, the filmmaker is seen to hold less of an advantage and is more exposed and vulner- able. I have found that it is possible to establish a quite dif- ferent kind of rapport with my subjects when working alone - not always more trusting, but more relaxed, more

flexible, more spontaneous and humorous, and sometimes more confiding.

Another possible consequence is that a filmmaker

working alone may be more willing to take risks, or act

intuitively, or follow up unexpected opportunities. This is reinforced by the low cost of video tape compared to 16mm film. A degree of experimentation with video will not place an entire production budget in jeopardy. Perhaps more important than cost is the sense one has of being fully responsible for one's actions, or of having no alternative but to trust one's own instincts. There are no other mem- bers of a team to confer with, no pressures to avoid upset- ting the expectations of the group. Filmmaking in the past has often been conservative out of a misplaced profession- alism that discourages individuality - unlike the improvi- sation expected of a jazz musician, who is bound to a

general theme but not necessarily to a particular score.

Working alone may also encourage a different attitude toward ethnography. The immediate impressions that bear

upon one when one is alone may take on greater anthropo- logical significance than the more abstract aspects of the

society one is studying. This can sometimes prove to be a

disadvantage in social research, but it can also lead to an

opening-out of one's perception of the nuances of people's relationships, the qualities of their sensory life and the finer details of their cultural world. I shall have more to say about this in relation to a video project I recently con- ducted in India.

A new media economy Perhaps in the future we will conclude that the most revolu-

tionary change brought about by the new technology is the

independence it has given filmmakers from the traditional sources of ethnographic film funding - the television, edu- cational and arts establishments. Desktop filmmaking may have some of the same liberating effects as the paperback revolution, electronic music composition and internet pub- lishing. These have not meant that better books or music or

public debate will necessarily follow, but it has meant that more individuals can test their talents without having to pass through the boomgates of corporate culture.

I am speaking here initially of television, which has

sponsored so much of British ethnographic filmmaking in the past few decades. It is to the credit of British television that a substantial number of innovative ethnographic films have been made, including some of Roger Graef's studies of British institutions4 as well as more clearly-designated ethnographic films in the Granada 'Disappearing World' series and such BBC series as 'Worlds Apart' and 'Under the Sun'. It is to British television's discredit that this will-

ingness to take chances has steadily waned in recent years, and that few if any films by such important ethnographic filmmakers as Jean Rouch, John Marshall, Ian Dunlop, Timothy Asch, Jorge Preloran and Robert Gardner have ever been shown on British television. Partly parochialism, partly timidity, this is also symptomatic of the widespread television imperative to try to second-

guess popular interest rather than lead it. Freed from the need to seek television funding, ethno-

graphic filmmakers are also freed from many of the con- straints that go with it: very large production budgets, oversized crews, broadcast deadlines, arbitrary film

lengths (typically 26 or 52 minutes, very occasionally longer), the ministrations of commissioning editors, sty- listic conventions (voice-over introductions, glossy series

packaging, interviews, 'signposting', 'cracking the char-

acters', horror vacui) and a general preference for exotic or controversial topics. These sorts of requirements, taken

together, make innovative ethnographic filmmaking for television very hard indeed.

Funding from other institutional sources may not grant much more autonomy. Educational funding - through philanthropic foundations or government agencies -

imposes its own expectations, which, being based upon past approaches, tend to want these to be reproduced. The model of the heavily-scripted American 'educational film' with its orotund narration has survived many decades and

appears to have gained a further lease of life on the

Discovery Channel and cable television. The sombre gen- uflexions of the Ken Burns style, or the obligatory inter- views of 'Disappearing World', have become increasingly threadbare when copied by other filmmakers.

There is also the expectation that ethnographic films will be made primarily as teaching aids, offering knowl-

edge in propositional statements and providing illustra- tions for concepts already well assimilated by the

discipline. Ethnographic films, from this viewpoint, are meant to provide information rather than other forms of

knowledge. If they do not do this, they are generally rele-

gated to the role of backdrops, to evoke the missing phys- ical presence of the societies that anthropologists have written about. In a broader sense, such films are expected

l\ ?* "S3 t

Qing, the subject of Qing, the newspaperman by Yi Sicheng.

1. For convenience, when I use the terms films and filmmaking, I include also videos and video-making.

2. Three examples are Melissa Llewelyn-Davies' film The women's Olamal, Brian Moser 's Last of the Cuiva, and the trilogy of films on the Hamar made by Jean Lydall and Joanna Head.

3. This is the programme of the East Asian Institute of Visual Anthropology in Kunming, co-sponsored by the IWF (Institut f?r den Wissenschaftlichen Film) in Germany and assisted by staff from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at Manchester University.

4. These appeared in such series as The space between words (1972), Decisions (1975-76), and Police (1982).

5. Photo wallahs (1991). 6. The Doon School

project was carried out with an Australian Research Council fellowship at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University.

7. The first film from the project, Doon School chronicles, was released in 2000. It is distributed in the UK by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

8. Constructing post- colonial India: National character and the Doon School. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

9. Jay Ruby (2000:38-39, 266-267) has also argued for ethnographic films to become less tied to narrow conceptions of what makes a 'good film'. Although I am broadly in agreement with him, I would argue that the

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001 17

to be demonstrations of what is already known by the pro- ducers or their academic advisers, rather than explorations of what is unclear to them, or that may raise new questions. This is particularly true in the English-speaking world, where ethnographic filmmaking is regarded primarily as a method of instruction or popularization rather than a way of conducting new research.

From time to time, ethnographic filmmakers have been able to gain access to government arts funding. A film on which I collaborated in 1989-90 was partially funded in this way.5 However, the situation was unusual in that we

applied for a documentary film fellowship rather than funds to make a specified film. We thus avoided the

process by which arts administrators and their advisers control the sorts of films that get made. This process is

usually heavily prescriptive, for it requires a film to be

substantially conceived in advance, and often even

scripted, rather than be risk-taking and exploratory. Sometimes the proposals have to go through repeated assessments and revisions. And generally, because public money is involved, it means that films must be deemed

socially 'relevant' and be supported by production guaran- tees or television pr?sales. This is clearly a formula for safe films likely to appeal to cautious administrators, and not very different in spirit from the reassurances required by television producers that every film project promise a

popular success. In this climate, the topic assumes far more importance than the filmmaker, even though the

topic of many a famous film - a stolen bicycle, a family's daily life - would probably seem ludicrously inadequate if

put to an arts funding board. Failure is regarded as irre-

sponsible and unprofessional. But as Jean Rouch has

remarked, filmmakers who attempt something difficult have a right to fail.

Interviews have become a staple of films made with

educational, television and arts funding, since one of the safest ways to 'pitch' a film for support is to frame it in a list of potential interviewees. These may be subject-area specialists, celebrities, representatives of local views, or witnesses to historical events. The style has inevitably spilled over into ethnographic film, so that filmmakers have a marked tendency to ask people to talk about their

experiences rather than film them actually having them. It is perhaps unfair to ethnographic filmmakers to say that this is quicker and easier; rather, the style has become entrenched in the thinking of audiences and filmmakers alike. Many first-time documentary filmmakers, accus- tomed to what they see on television, can think of no alter- native but to sit people down and interview them.

Widening perspectives Digital video reduces the need for large-scale institutional

funding and offers the freedom to explore a variety of

approaches to visual anthropology. Even for those who

have been able to go their own way in the past, the experi- ence of using the new technology can be liberating and

revelatory. Video is not simply a replacement for film but a medium with its own capabilities and limitations.

I have benefited from the new technology myself, after an initial reluctance to adopt it. Has it changed the way I work? In many ways it has, although the lessons I learnt

using film still underpin what I do. But some of the

changes are dramatic. For example, the production budget of my current project, which I can carry out on a modest

university research grant (and out of which I will produce five films), is less than one-tenth of my last 16mm budget, which produced only one film.6 This has largely freed me from the economic and stylistic constraints of the institu- tional funding mentioned above.

In 1997 I began a long-term video study of a boys' boarding school in northern India.7 The idea was suggested to me by an Indian anthropologist, Sanjay Srivastava, who had studied the school's relation to post-colonial e?tes and whose book on the subject appeared in 1998.81 initially sought television support for the project, with some suc- cess but also with misgivings. I began to realize that the

proposals I was writing were locking me into a process that I wanted to be more open-ended and more like the projects I had undertaken in the past. I eventually opted to work in

digital video. This undoubtedly helped me to modify the orientation of the project as it evolved. I began with an interest in the school as a site of diversity, an intersection of different cultural strands in Indian society. But as time went on I began to think of it more often as a carefully con- structed island of cultural homogeneity in the lives of the diverse students who passed through it. As a result, I began filming quite different subjects from those I had started with. I believe this shift would have been more difficult if I had been committed to a 16mm film.

It is normal, of course, for ethnographic filmmakers to

respond to the realities of situations as they occur, and often to revise their projects radically in the process. Indeed, I know of few cases, and certainly none of my

Left: The characteristic desk- lockers called 'toyes' used at Doon School, a design that originated at Winchester School in England. Right: Students on the way to classes at Doon School.

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cinema has evolved forms of expression and professional skills that we should build upon, not abandon. Rather than believing that filmmaking skill is secondary to producing good ethnographic films (as he believes writing skill is secondary to producing good anthropological writing), I would argue the reverse: that if anything, ethnographic filmmakers need to become even more skillful and inventive. I do not believe quality of thought is finally separable from quality of expression.

Henley, Paul. 2000. Ethnographic film: Technology, practice and anthropological theory. Visual Anthropology 13(3): 207-226.

Ruby, Jay. 2000. Picturing culture: Explorations of film and anthropology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Srivastava, Sanjay. 1998. Constructing post-colonial India: National character and the Doon School. London and New York: Routledge.

Vaughan, Dai. 1999. For documentary. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

18 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001

own, in which a film turned out as it was originally envis-

aged. But I believe that working in video allows the

process of transformation and evolution to take more varied and experimental forms and to result in a wider

variety of work. Ethnographic films in the three decades from 1960 to 1990, when they were not dominated by a

spoken commentary, tended to be constructed around a

specific event, such as a ritual or a technical process. Or

they followed the course of a conflict or schism and its res-

olution, tracing the outlines of what Victor Turner at about the same time was calling 'social dramas'. It was an

approach that stressed 'cases' and closure. Sponsors were

partly responsible for inspiring (or imposing) this

approach, but it also stemmed from a broader cinematic

imperative to produce a particular kind of performance or

exemplary product. The technical complexities of film-

making, and the potentially quite disrupting appearance of

filmmaking equipment, would have reinforced this adher- ence to established methods, encouraging filmmakers either to intervene and direct the people they filmed or stand back and try to diminish the effect of their presence as much as possible. The less cumbersome technology of video not only reduces the intrusiveness of the filmmaking process, putting the subjects more at ease, but I believe also encourages a less institutionalized approach among those holding the cameras, and a visual anthropology more

flexibly reflective about anthropological ideas and less insistent about 'covering' events. In this regard, Paul

Henley's comments (Henley 2000: 217) on the distinction between the anthropological and the ethnographic are sug-

gestive, for the new technology, while it will undoubtedly simplify making ethnographic accounts of particular events, may also encourage more visually focused explo- rations of anthropological ideas, without such a heavy reliance upon words.

I found that my overall approach to filming differed in

significant ways from my work in the past. Whereas before it had tended to be marked by a certain anxiety, a sense of

occasion, I found that it was now more thoughtful and observant. The desire to achieve something was still there, but it was less narrowly focused on familiar expository and narrative methods. I felt more open to my surroundings and more willing to explore my ideas about the school through the camera. Undoubtedly this was partly because the cir- cumstances were different - this was a long-term study of a large institution, rather than a narrower study of a family group - but the very fact that I had chosen to use video had

already contributed to the different scope of this project. I felt no obligation to produce a particular kind of result to

satisfy a funding body, academic institution, or even

myself. I wanted to see what could be learnt about the school through the process of filming it, and what sorts of films might come about as a consequence. I therefore saw the project not so much in terms of films per se as an inves-

tigation I could make with a camera rather than (for example) through a series of articles or a book.

This altered my approach to both content and form. I was more prepared to explore 'unfilmic' material and unconventional structures. This might result in a ten-hour

film, to be 'read' in segments like a book, or a loosely- related group of film segments of different lengths and

styles, each suited to a different aspect of the school. I

began collecting texts from school documents and consid-

ering how these might be used. Although I was following certain events in the lives of the students, I was also trying to examine the school as a cultural complex in which aes- thetic considerations had taken on great importance, often

approaching that of economics, politics and ideology. I wanted particularly to explore the school through the details of its physical presence, which impress themselves more insistently upon the students than they ever could

upon an outsider. I soon found that the video camera allowed me to make stills as I was filming, and I began conceiving of stills as an integral part of how the films would be constructed. I became more open to making visual links and 'asides' - or rather, this kind of thinking was occurring more often at an earlier stage, in the filming rather than the editing. I accepted that many of these

approaches might be wrong for certain kinds of viewers -

impatient film festival audiences, or university teachers

trying to find films to use in their lectures. But I held on to the hope that students (at the school or elsewhere) and other viewers interested in schools might respond to them,

"3SS? i mm

Top left: Doon School students cross the playing fields to breakfast. Top right: Reading Shakespeare in a class at Doon School. Above: Boy late for classes in the Doon School's Main Building.

A group of first-year boys in Foot House at The Doon School.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001 19

and that the project might add something useful to the

growing anthropological literature on schools.9

Working alone, I felt freer to come and go as I pleased, instead of arriving at a place as though to an appointed task, hi a previous project in Sardinia, I had worked

closely with a Sardinian sound recordist, and because there were two of us, I was never quite sure whether people were

responding to him or to me. I also felt a tension about what

they expected of us. No doubt they felt this as well. When I worked as a single filmmaker, these questions didn't arise. The result was a different kind of rapport. I have mentioned that those being filmed are quick to sense that even two people filming them form a closed circle, with its own internal interactions. This produces a certain social

distance, sometimes permitting the subject a less

demanding relationship than with a single filmmaker, whom they must engage with more directly and inti-

mately; but what is gained by this separation - more

autonomy for the subject, less self-consciousness - is also

potentially a loss. The subject is often more reserved, less

forthcoming, more inclined to assume a persona for the sake of the film.

I found I could communicate with people more easily from behind a video camera than a film camera, partly because of the fewer technical preoccupations demanded

by video and partly because I was alone. In place of con-

versations, however casual, I could now often simply coexist with people in a desultory way. This produced both relaxed silences and unexpected outpourings. In one instance it led to a completely unplanned film. A 12-year- old boy began addressing me in long monologues - while

sitting outdoors, or lying on his bed in the dormitory, or

walking across the playing fields. I began recording these encounters experimentally, without the fear (as I would have had with film) that I was using up precious rawstock. He spoke of everything under the sun - nature, philosophy, human relationships, history, education, books he had read, films he had seen - and although I had thought of him

simply as one of the group I was filming, I eventually real- ized that he deserved a film to himself. This kind of unex-

pected by-product - the possibility of going off on a tangent - is, I think, one of the further benefits of the turn to video.

Filming alone, I also became aware of a subtle change in the power relations that exist between filmmakers and film subjects. Although my presence as an individual

may sometimes have made my subjects feel obliged to

engage with me, at other times they felt they could ignore me completely. I welcomed this informality, which seemed to attest to a more open relationship. And

although the Indian students I was filming were almost

invariably polite, it was encouraging sometimes to see their boredom or wish to be elsewhere showing through. As time went on many of them developed a quite offhand attitude toward the whole process.

Other effects and concerns For some years it has been possible to edit 16mm and 35mm film footage on computers through a kind of hybrid technology, but most filmmakers still worked on flatbed film editing machines that had changed little in design over half a century. You worked directly with the pieces of

film, and you could hold them to the light and see the indi- vidual frames. Editing film in this way could be compared to a handcraft, like carpentry or tailoring. But digital editing on computers has now put the editing process at arm's length, or rather at a much greater distance. You are not actually handling any physical materials, apart from a

keyboard and mouse. For many people the difference is

comparable to shifting from writing in longhand to using a

typewriter or word processor, with some rather parallel effects. One's ideas often appear to emerge more effort-

lessly. Nonlinear computer editing has become the

accepted way of editing video material, coming as a great relief to video editors after years of dubbing scenes from one tape to another.

There is less clear testimony about this than about the use of video cameras, but its effect on how films are con- structed may be even greater. Video editors speak of the

greatly increased speed that computer editing has given them in finding shots and manipulating them. For me it has

4

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43

Left: Measuring a student at Doon School. Right: Studying Sanskrit at Doon School. Right below: In an English class at Doon School.

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Left: Stainless steel tableware used at Doon School. Right: The blue and grey shirt of the Doon School games uniform.

20 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001

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The cumbersome technology of 16 mm film compared to a video camcorder (see p. 15), which records both image and sound. Above: 16 mm filming in Uganda, 1968. Top left: David MacDougall and James Blue during filming of Kenya Boran, 1972. Top centre: David MacDougall during filming of Tempus de baristas, Sardinia 1992. Top right: Judith MacDougall with Nagra, Sennheiser microphone and cat, 1982.

Editing Good-bye old man with Thomas Woody Minipini, 1976.

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certainly reduced the frustrations of hunting for material and has given me much more freedom to try out different

ways of editing it. But this same speed, at least for many professional editors, has also led to shorter editing sched- ules and hastier decision-making. The distinguished film editor Dai Vaughan has said that it was during those moments of searching in a bin for a shot that he often had his best ideas. Even the greater volume of material often

generated by video may, paradoxically, dictate a faster

pace by forcing filmmakers to select more quickly and

arbitrarily what they are going to use, excluding the rest.

Computer editing also makes available a bewildering array of transitions and special effects, which may tempt the

unwary into purely cosmetic excesses. Perhaps of more concern (or delight, depending on your point of view) is

the extent to which digital images can be altered. Vaughan (1999:188) is worried about the gradual erosion of our belief in the indexical link between film (and by extension, video) and reality. This is not simply a matter of eviden-

tiary or forensic value. Manipulations in photography have

always occurred, but we may finally reach the day when 'the assumption of a privileged relation between a photo- graph and its object, an assumption which has held good for 150 years and on which cin?-actuality is founded, will have ceased to be operative'.

There is one further effect which I have not heard dis- cussed but have observed in my own case. The more

unmediated, even disembodied, quality of the video

footage as it appears on the computer screen, perhaps para- doxically, has created a new ambience of intimacy with my subjects, unencumbered by the distractions of rotating sprockets, tangles of film and tape splicers. They seem to exist in a more rarefied and quintessential form, leading to a more intense kind of concentration upon them and their

surroundings. But this same transparency produces, in its

turn, a tendency toward more abstract modes of thinking than when editing film, where one is perhaps more preoc- cupied with the sheer mechanics of the constructive

process. In my case, I saw my subjects in a larger context and was more concerned about its power over them. I found that video editing fostered a more distanced and analytical approach as well as a sense of intimacy. I should like to know if other filmmakers have experienced this effect.

New ways of shooting and editing ethnographic films

may result from the technology now becoming available, but this will be only one of the results. New formats will be created, and new ways of looking at them. There are

already video disc cameras, CD-ROMs, DVDs and the

internet, with DVD-authoring and production now

becoming feasible on the desktop. Because of the increased flexibility in postproduction and viewing prac- tices, we can expect to see some ethnographic films taking more specialized and unconventional forms. They may not even be recognizable as films as we have known them, but more extended studies comparable to monographs or PhD dissertations. Out of the same raw materials, films can be made in various versions, with different levels of contex- tual material and interpretation. And with the lower costs of video, one need not necessarily make films for large audiences. I have edited several films from the Indian school material primarily for the students themselves and their parents. I also plan to put compilations of material

together for scholars interested in special topics, such as children's games and pastimes. The result of this new-won freedom may be that some ethnographic films become more unwieldy and 'difficult', but this is perhaps one of the necessary growing pains of a more mature and inter-

esting visual anthropology. $

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001 21