This morning a friend of mine referred me to a video on FaceBook which was
almost totally faked - it was a video about the dangers of drinking and
driving, very well done, very effective, and very realistic. I cannot
imagine anyone making such a video without faking it, hiring actors, using
computer graphics and so on. Of course one can shoot film of wrecks and
grieving relatives, but how do you get quality shots of the critical events
leading up to an accident, the drinking, the stumbling out to the car, the
erratic driving, the blurred vision?
Photography is an art, and much art is devoted to telling true stories with
or without the detailed records that scientists like to use to back up their
research. Raskolnikov was a totally ficticious character and Dostoyevsky
made him up -- fakery -- but Crime and Punishment is a classic because it
uncovers a corner of human nature that psychologists have had virtually no
success at documenting with hard facts.
Perhaps this discussion has reached a point where no meeting of minds is
possible -- some of you feel that only film which is actually shot in the
wild should be used for nature documentaries, but for me the critical issue
is whether a real story is accurately told -- how the film-maker gets his
shots does not matter to me (assuming of course no violent or abusive
tricks).
Bill Silvert
