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This
is old news of course. About 20 minutes after
movies were invented, Georges Melius was already
using them in France to bamboozle viewers with
special effects. In America, the 1898 sinking
of the Battleship Maine was filmed with models
in a tub and presented as a straight newsreel.
(The battle smoke was produced by two guys puffing
cigars just outside the frame.) In 1914, Birth
of a Nation caused an uproar, not with camera
tricks this time, but with the perceived pro-slavery
bias of its content.
For
a century now, philosophers and social critics
have wrestled with the implications of two intractable
facts:
- Even
the most honestly intended movies cannot help
but falsify reality.
- All
movies, whether honest or dishonest, have an
unusually powerful ability to convince viewers
that the shadows on the screen are real.
Let's
look at these facts and then see how responsible
videographers can keep programs honest in their
essentials even though they're unavoidably crooked
in their details.
The
simplest lie is omission:
the viewer can't know it if you don't show it.
To demonstrate, let's use a short real estate
promo that purports to document a home for sale.
You linger over the big master bedroom suite,
peruse every feature of the remodeled kitchen,
lovingly survey the family room (fireplace, bar,
etc.). But the other two bedrooms and the living
room are never on-screen (in truth because they're
each no more than eight feet square). Did you
misrepresent these rooms? Perish the thought!
You merely didn't include them. But did this omission
misrepresent the property? You betcha.
Fibbing
Within the Shot
Even
when you do tape something you can still omit
unwanted material by using the power
of the frame: the border around
the screen that acts as an information gatekeeper.
Through judicious framing, your video can show
the home's lovely front yard, while excluding
the roof that needs replacing, not to mention
the 1948 single-wide trailer that's rusting away
next door.
And
while we're framing creatively, let's jazz up
the back yard by placing a long flower box out
of frame in the foreground. The colorful blooms
waving gently across the bottom of the screen
conceal the bare dirt behind them; and since you've
framed off their planter box, the flowers seem
to be growing in the ground.
"Golf
course view," says the ad, and sure enough,
it's right there on the screen. But viewers can't
tell that the fairway's a mile distant because
the intervening housing tract is concealed below
the frame line.
Scaling
reinforces the country club scam. A telephoto
lens makes the golf course appear much closer
than it is. On the other hand, if you want to
scale something farther rather than closer, try
a wide-angle view. With an ultra-wide lens to
inflate it, you might want to shoot that tiny
living room after all. (For a textbook demonstration
of this technique, look at the photos of trailer
and motor home interiors in RV magazines; then
compare them with the ground plans.)
While
looking at RV ads, study the exotic landscapes
that are supposedly outside the windows of these
rigs. Many are inserted by compositing,
a technique available to video editors as well
as still photographers. In the old days, convincing
chromakey was unavailable to consumers; but with
patience and digital post you can put your spouse
on Mt. Everest.
In
short, through framing, scaling and compositing,
a savvy video editor can tell big lies within
single shots.
Editorial
Prevarications
By
far the most powerful
fibbing device is the edit. Because
viewers naturally combine multiple stand-alone
shots into single continuous actions, you can
synthesize false realities by juxtaposing the
right elements.
Expand
or contract space at will. Give the actress playing
"homeowner" a golfing outfit and clubs.
In shot A, she emerges from her front door and
walks out of frame, screen-right. In shot B, she
walks on screen from the left and goes through
the country club door. Conclusion? The course
is just across the street, instead of a mile away.
For
the opposite spatial effect, have her cross that
tiny living room twice: once moving away from
the camera and again coming toward it. Hold the
first shot until she's two-thirds across the room;
then cut to the opposite angle when she's still
only one-third across. This edit will make the
room seem 25% longer than it is.
Your
real estate video couldn't show a truly flat-out
lie like a fictional backyard swimming pool because
a visit to the property would instantly reveal
that it didn't exist. But when the viewer can't
verify, the sky's the limit.
Literally,
in the example of your spouse on Mt. Everest.
Suppose you have a stock shot of the distant peak:
a low angle with endless snow fields in the foreground
and hard blue sky overhead. Now: dress your spouse
for severe weather and set up a low angle waist
shot with a similar blue sky background. Spouse
trudges into empty shot, pauses to look upward,
then doggedly continues out of shot again.
When
your better half looks up, cut in the stock shot
of the awesome mountain. Viewers will assume that
your spouse is close enough to Everest to see
it. (Just before the shot, rush some frosty snow
goggles out of the deep freeze and put them on
your partner. Dry mashed potato flakes dropped
in front of an offscreen leaf blower can add convincing
flurries. These extra touches will help sell the
gag.)
A
helicopter fly-by stock shot of the summit shows
the triumphant conquerors waving at the camera.
Cut in another low angle of spouse waving (goggles
off to verify identity) and the big lie is complete.
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Good
and Bad Reasons for Lying
Since
we can't make videos at all without at least choosing
angles, framing shots and cutting, we have to
lie a little. In that case, what's a "stretcher,"
as Huck Finn called them, and what's downright
unethical? The answer depends on the purpose of
the fib and the genre in which it's used, whether
fiction program, documentary, news clip or commercial.
In
a story film or video, it's open season. After
all, viewers know that the entire movie is that
acceptable form of lying called fiction. They
don't care if something is real, but only if it
seems real.
For
documentaries the rules are tighter. In a wonderful
program called The Year of the Jaguar, a bird
(and the photographer shooting it) is 100 feet
up in the rain forest canopy when the bird drops
a fruit. Cut to the base of the tree just before
the fruit splatters on the ground. Did the photographer
climb 100 feet down in time to capture the splash?
I don't think so.
The
same program repeatedly pairs "glance/object"
shots: first a potential meal betraying its presence
and then a jaguar suddenly looking off screen,
as if in response. Were the shot pairs recorded
in order? Were they even related? Naaah!
But
the bird's fruit did hit the ground just as shown,
and the big cat did react to just that prey in
just that fashion. These edits are merely procedural
fibs intended to synthesize what actually happened
but could not be photographed that way.
By
contrast, Disney was rightly criticized for using
special effects to make scorpions square dance
like TV cats going chow-chow-chow. The difference?
Scorpions never behave that way. In documentaries,
then, editorial lies may be okay if the results
are essentially truthful.
The
standards for commercials should be tougher still,
because their objective is to obtain your money
or your vote. Things have improved on kiddie spots,
where three-inch plastic warriors no longer look
a yard high on the TV screen.
But
every step forward brings a step back. Now we're
up to here in so-called "psychics" who
seem to know your lover's most intimate secrets
and will tell you all about them ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
True, an on-screen title warns that only 3 minutes
are free and the whole shoddy game's just for
fun. All you need to decode this disclaimer is
a 36-inch set with 700 lines of resolution and
a degree from Evelyn Wood speed reading.
Political
commercials deliver the most insidious lies of
all because they don't always use editing or camera
tricks. Resonant images can do all the work instead.
Here's the handsome candidate strolling on the
beach at sunset, shoes in hand and cuffs rolled
up bare ankles. The implicit message is that this
guy's as warm and natural is the gentle surf at
sunset. The only explicit statement, though, is
that he's smart enough to keep his pants dry (if
not bright enough to wear shorts).
And
perhaps even that is a lie.
But
whatever programs you may create limit the actual
falsehoods to fiction. In non-fiction videos,
know the difference between procedural lies in
pursuit of the truth and content lies in pursuit
of a buck or an office. |
