Apr 17 2008
New media - old wave
Many aspects of the new media aesthetic are derived from economic and technological circumstance. Smaller cheaper cameras favor hand-held run and gun shooting, no lights, and an emphasis on the creative vision of the cameraman/director, rather than the technical expertise of a team of specialists.
50 years ago those same principles were being advanced by the French new wave as “auteur theory”. A disdain for “learned framings, complicated lighting, polished photography” - promotion of the caméra-stylo: the prescient notion that directors should use cameras as stylishly and spontaneously as writers use pens.
An article on the influence of Truffaut & Godard on Hollywood directors including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma in last week’s New Yorker.
Oh nooooooo!
so Michael Rosenblum and Howard Owens were right all along? How am I going to break it to my wife?
The very same principle applies to the f/8 and be there mantra of lean and mean reportage still shooters. The very nature of the smaller less expensive equipment though doesn’t equate to those disregarding the basic principles of artistic and technically composed content.
The detractors are set in their ways and to think outside the box is an uncomfortable place for them - if a shooter who espouses the Solo Video Journalist Paradigm hasn’t been tainted by structured training, then one is free to take the chance at trying something different without fear of reprisal. Too many TV shooters play it safe - especially now with the amount of layoffs occurring in broadcast news at the local and regional level.
I have learned to shoot by example - and how not to shoot by theat same means. From what I have seen so far - TV shooters have it all wrong and wonder why viewership is dropping off.
Maybe instead of shooting the same boring news stories over and over - they take the blinders off and create factual entertainment that has a unique shooting style used. The culture viewing content these days is different than it was 10 years ago.
Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt
Cliff,
Stop pretending to be an authority and produce something of worth. I can outshoot you (in any style) with one eye gouged out.
–YOUR Chief Detractor