Concert shot with HD100

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

I think that it depends on whether or not the documentary is acting as an important historical document. Perhaps the greatest documentary ever made was the WORLD AT WAR series from BBC. That show did the painstaking research not only to find war footage, but actual footage from the actual battles (ie- not just footage from a random WWII battle). That sort of work is needed for something as serious as WWII.

As I said, "the intended audience". The BBC was not making that show for kids playing with GI Joe or someone looking for John Wayne gung-ho. The mistake is averaging everything to a similar standard. Styles change, whch is great, but there seems to be a trend to do everything in a similar style from news to drama.

Originally Posted by John Vincent

But for a concert, or animal documentary, it's not only fine to 'fudge' a few scenes, but also to more or less stage them - just about every animal documentary ever made is guilty of this 'sin' in one way or another, particularly the older ones. Television interviews having been doing this for years of course (ie - taking/editing in reaction shots out of context to deliever a greater impact).

Talk about obvious (to me at least)! I don't know how many recent animal documentaries about "Lulu" the leopard or some other animal character that is clearly footage of several animals clipped together to create the "lifestory".

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Doing it for political debates (neat story by the way) I think is a bit of a grey area, but then again it depends on exactly who's paying the bills and what they want. Obviously the people in your story didn't come to talk about the (indoor) weather!

But what if you had a chance to go back in time to shoot the Gettysburg Address? Would you want to edit around the gaffes, or show the whole thing? Or perhaps a better analogy, would you shoot all of Lincoln's re-election campaign speeches and edit them together for effect, or shoot one and let it ride?

Yikes, what a question! Would he have ever been allowed to run if television was around?

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Yikes, what a question! Would he have ever been allowed to run if television was around?

That's a whole other question! I guess the basic theme of this thread is you have to do the best you can w/ the tools and time available. I think Steve did a great job w/ what he had - which is a good lesson at any time.

john
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