August 10th - Eldon Booth

This week Eldon Booth spoke to us about his art practice in moving image, I actually took part in the 48 hour film festival last year so I knew this would be a very interesting subject to learn about but I quickly realised that I would need a lot of my media studies knowledge as well to understand and discuss this medium. Booth's work seems to address the human condition and social concerns in NZ communities within the wider context of Western culture. He deals with concepts of realism, the difference between reality and illusion, and the film techniques used to portray it. There are certain elements used in film to create the illusion of realism, three rather important things that must be used were realised by an academic, novelist and critic named Raymond Williams: a contemporary setting is obviously applied, action is described in human terms (this can relate back to the human condition), and it must be socially extended, meaning it deals with the lives of ordinary people. This actually relates to an essay, "Realism and Convention," by Marion Jordan where she analyses the soap opera "Coronation Street" in regards to realism and the film techniques used to create a continuation drama. Like Raymond Williams she talks about the characters and setting being realistic, working class unlike the characters in shows like 'Friends' where they always get into crazy situations or live in great apartments that realistically would probably cost them a fortune to live in. Its tone is that of "social realism," the show chronicles the lives of a working class community, all of whom live on the same street (hence the title) and frequent the same pub. To me soap operas are most realistic in their longevity, its a relation to real life's continuation, and Jordan argues that "it is through the organization of the passage of time, the relation between character and narrative and, finally, the use of gossip that the continuous serial is both able to 'run for years' and 'preserve a basic stability while making enough changes to prevent tedious repetition' (Richard Dyer et al. 1981: 9)" (Soap Opera by Dorothy Hobson, page 23). Basically these shows try to be realistic but go as close to the edge of fabrication as they can, creating barely believable events.

Some very useful terms Booth talked about were transparency and reflection in connection to documentary or recorded reality and docu-drama, a dramatization of reality. What he means by transparency is that the camera creates a window, anybody who watches TV or films has an understanding of what places look like even though they have never even been there because of a transparent window to the world through the camera. In this case naturalistic film techniques would be used like natural lighting and sound. Reflection is all about creating a constructed reality. In a docu-drama the reality is obtained from the illusion of realism, a really amazing example that Booth showed us was a special episode of 'ER' called 'Ambush' (1997). The whole episode was filmed live like a play, with the whole cast having memorized their dialogue and blocking. The illusion of reality had many faces: it was filmed with handheld cameras, the cast would talk about the camera and look into the lens, characters would get in the camera mans way, or vice versa, sometimes the focus blurred, and sometimes the camera movements became erratic as if the camera man got an adrenaline rush in the midst of the action. From these examples it sounds like a low budget, amateur documentary which I think is the point, if the camera man kept perfectly cool in an emergency room no one would believe it was even remotely real, or if the characters acted indifferent about the camera it would seem like any other episode.
These same camera techniques were used in Booth's film 'Withdrawal' (2001), unlike his work 'Five Good Reasons' which technically focused more on dialogue, this film was very much about the filming and editing process. The use of filming with hand held cameras is something the viewer associates with real life, in fact Booth said in class "we tried to use the worst cameras we could find to help with this concept," and the use of natural light and sound encourages the fabrication of reality. The synopsis of the film is an ailing elderly man is forced to sell his farm to pay for his own medical care, at the same time the life of his grandson is documented. The footage for the film was shot over a two year period which links back to this idea of continuation drama, it chronicles the deterioration of the grandfather. The film is presented as a split screen and puts the grandfathers medical drug use next to the grandsons drug use, we can find meaning through this use of juxtaposition, this kind of linkage the different types of deterioration have to each other (one willing, one without choice). The camera shots are bonded to realism as the film is shot in a way that you would expect someone would do for some family event, nothing serious. For example the film features a lot of establish shots, shots of long duration, they are a bit shaky but this is all actually intentional. This film was a great example of realism in film, I liked how it was filmed amateur style, it made you very aware of the editing and film making process and the fine line between reality and illusion.