macdougall is digital video changing ethnographic film

8/3/2019 MacDougall is Digital Video Changing Ethnographic FIlm

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Among the filmmakers I know, one of the most frequentlyasked questions these days is: What do you think of

video? Soon followed by, Has video changed the wayyou work? And its true that many former filmmakers arenow videomakers, by choice or by necessity. These ques-tions have particular relevance for visual anthropology,since the making of ethnographic films on film seems tohave come to a dead end. But with the advent of video, andafter a long period of stasis and stagnation, new directionsseem to be emerging in ethnographic filmmaking.1 Thereare indications of this at recent film festivals, where manyof the films, particularly by younger anthropologists,reveal a greater willingness to experiment with anthropo-logical ideas and with the medium. Part of this renewal can

be put down to impatience with the didacticism that hascharacterized visual anthropology and its aspirations in the

past. It may also be due to shifts in the interests of anthropologists, away from descriptions of discrete culturesand toward issues of social experience and identity in aglobalizing and post-colonial world. But, as has happenedseveral times in the past in the 1930s with the coming ofsound, in the 1960s with the new synchronous camerasand recorders the change may also be due to the arrivalof a new technology. That this might occur was recently

pointed out by Paul Henley, who noted that a fortuitouscombination of changing theoretical paradigms withinanthropology and recent technological developments isfinally giving rise to conditions that could result in thewidespread adoption of filmmaking as an importantmedium of ethnographic research (Henley 2000: 209).

For at least three decades, most ethnographic filmmakingin Britain and North America has been committed to theagendas of television and education, rather than to openingup new areas of anthropological research. The exceptionsare cases in which cameras have been used to gather visualdata of rituals, body movements, technological processesand the like for later analysis, but this hardly amounts toethnographic filmmaking as a form of professional dis-course. There have been few ethnographic films that could

be described as constituting original research in anthropology. To many anthropologists this has perhaps nevereven seemed possible, and in such an atmosphere few younganthropologists have been willing to commit themselves to

such a perilous career path. And yet, many of the areas ofresearch that have attracted anthropological interest duringthis period are those in which ethnographic film arguablyhas its greatest potential. It is perhaps uniquely suited toanalysing visible cultural forms, the immediacy of indi-vidual experience, human relationships with the materialworld, and social interactions in all their evolving and mul-tivalent complexity. If visual anthropology has yet to makemany significant contributions in these areas, the reasonsmay lie as much in a lack of opportunity as in the adoptionof inappropriate filmic models from the marketplace.

Video has been with us a long time the National FilmBoard of Canadas Challenge for Change project wasusing reel-to-reel black and white video in the 1960s.

Betacam and Beta SP have been widely used in documen-tary and ethnographic film production since the 1980s. Thedifference today is digitalvideo, which has made it pos-sible to produce high-quality images from very small cam-eras, some not much larger than a cigarette packet. Coupledwith this is desktop computer editing, which has obviated

the need to rely on expensive on-line video studios.The question: What do you think of video? usually

assumes a prior experience with 16mm filmmaking, andoften with what might be called the industrial model ofdocumentary film production. Typically, filmmakers haveworked in crews, or at a minimum in pairs, and have hadto rely upon large budgets obtained from television net-works, philanthropic foundations or government fundingagencies. Now for the first time it has become possible tomake a professional-looking film largely on your own,shooting it yourself and editing it in your home or office.

Not everyone, obviously, is capable of doing so, but forthose with the talent and tenacity, it can be done. This sig-nificantly challenges the power of the professional film-making establishment, with its customary financial

backing, administrators, directors and specialist techni-cians. It turns the responsibility back upon us, the anthro-

pologists and filmmakers, to accept the challenge toproduce new, exemplary ethnographic films.

The same things were being said (it will be objected)three decades ago about Super8 film, and a decade agoabout Hi-8 video. Very little in ethnographic film changedas a result of those technical innovations. Formulas drawnfrom television and the educational film continued to dom-inate the genre. Ethnographic film festivals such asCinma du Rel increasingly showed films aimed at tele-

vision and based on newsworthy topics or social issues,often structured primarily around interviews. Yet ironi-cally, some of the best ethnographic films of the time cameout of television, as a result of filmmakers challengingestablishment television on its own ground.2

The difference now is that digital video offers a realisticalternative to 16mm and the professional video formats,whereas Super8 (championed by Ricky Leacock) and Hi-8 were difficult to edit and technically marginal. Theywere both considered substandard for television broadcast,and few films made in either format were taken up by filmdistributors. Professional support for both formats wasminimal and gradually dwindled to nothing. There werefewer and fewer processing laboratories and studios that

could handle them. The problem was that although theseformats made low-cost production available to film-makers, post-production became a nightmare. There wasreally no equivalent to todays nonlinear desktop editing,which can take raw footage and carry it through to a videomaster complete with titles, effects and mixed soundtrack.

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Renewing ethnographic filmIs digital video changing the genre?

DAVID MACDOUGALL

David MacDougall was one of

the co-founders of the Centre forCross-Cultural Research at theAustralian National University,where he is currently anAustralian Research CouncilQueen Elizabeth II Fellow andConvenor of the Program inVisual Research Across Cultures.A book of his essays,Transcultural Cinema, waspublished by PrincetonUniversity Press in 1998. DavidMacDougalls first major film,To live with herds, won theGrand Prix Venezia Genti at theVenice Film Festival in 1972.Other films, many co-directedwith Judith MacDougall, include

a trilogy on the Turkana ofnorthwestern Kenya. From 1975to 1987 he made twelveethnographic documentaries withthe Australian Institute ofAboriginal Studies. In 1991, withJudith MacDougall, he madePhoto Wallahs about localphotographers in northern India.In 1992 he went to Sardinia tomake Tempus de baristas (1994)about three generations ofmountain shepherds. Since 1997he has been conducting a studyof The Doon School in northernIndia. His email [email protected]

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Some recent examplesA number of films shown at recent ethnographic festivalsgive promise of the new independence made possible bydigital video. Each exhibits experimentation in its construc-tion, a special level of intimacy with its subject, and a broad-ening concept of what a work of visual anthropology can be.

Ingeborg Solvangs Yesterday a girl, tomorrow awoman recently won the student prize at the GttingenInternational Ethnographic Film Festival. The film containsunusually intimate observations of womens lives in afamily attempting to maintain its decaying social position ina provincial Bolivian town. The film, although technicallyrough, is rich in detail and irony, especially in the awkwardceremony in which Ginny, the girl of the title, finallyemerges as a new adult. One feels this film could only have

been made by a single filmmaker, a confidant of the family,and a student of the complex factors of class, economics andgender politics underlying the familys situation.

Several other films shown at Gttingen indicate thevigour with which ethnographic filmmakers are using thenew technology. Among them was a group of films fromthe visual anthropology programme being developed atYunnan University in southwest China.3 In Qing, the news-papermanby Yi Sicheng, the focus is on the instability ofthe main subjects social status, but rather than belabouringthis in didactic fashion, the film studies it through a series

of carefully observed scenes ranging from private conver-sations to a public performance. By contrast,Khalfan andZanzibar, by Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti and kosstr, makes a virtue of didacticism, using the flexibility ofdigital editing to run lines of text across the screen and jux-

tapose unlikely segments of material.Another recent film, La mmoire dure by Rossella

Ragazzi, was shown at the 10th Rassegna Internazionaledi Documentari Etnografici in Nuoro, Sardinia. It followsseveral children in a special class for migrs who haverecently arrived in Paris. Ibrahim, Alpha, Isaak and MangMang are all castaways in a strange land, struggling tolearn a new culture and language and beset by traumaticmemories from their past. For them memory is dure

but it also resists, survives, endures. It is what their new

learning requires of them. The film enters gently intotheir daily lives and that of their teacher, examiningmoments of development in real time, such as the girlMang Mang repeatedly attempting to read the word hel-icopter. Here the qualities of digital filmmaking are notsecondary to the films meaning but central to the film-makers ability to give us access to the experiences andresponses of the children.

These films suggest that digital cameras and editinghave expanded the resources available to ethnographicfilmmakers. To test this you would perhaps have to watchthe filmmakers at work, but their testimonies can tell us alot. Has video changed the way you work? My encoun-ters with other filmmakers, and my own experiences, point

to a number of significant changes, although not alwaysthose one might expect.

Filmmakers predictably mourn the loss of the projectedfilm image. They also fear that the disciplines they learntin using 16mm film are being lost. Video tape is so cheapthat it may encourage filmmakers to shoot first exces-sively, in the hope of capturing everything and thinklater. This has not been my experience, nor that of most ofmy colleagues. If anything, I shoot more carefully nowthan ever before, perhaps because I am less distracted bytechnical matters (is the film running out, is the f-stop cor-rect?) and can give fuller attention to the qualities and con-tent of the image. Another factor may be that leaving film

behind creates an obstinate desire to preserve filmicvalues. As for the film image itself, two considerationsassume importance. First, apart from screenings at a fewfilm festivals, hardly any 16mm productions will be seenon anything but a television screen, either broadcast or, inmore degraded form, as VHS videocassettes. Second,video projection has improved so dramatically that images

produced by small digital cameras now look astonishinglybright and detailed, even in large theatres. We can expectthat before long high-definition video will look even

better, so that documentary images, for the first time sincethe 1930s (when 35mm was the norm), will once again betechnically equivalent to those of feature films. We canalso expect digital video discs (on which feature films are

now widely distributed) to replace VHS cassettes oncedocumentary distributors start using this format.

Working aloneBut these are technical matters. A more important questionis what have been the methodological and intellectual con-sequences when filmmakers turn to video. One evidentchange has been in the number of filmmakers workingalone. One-person filmmaking has always been possible,

but the difficulties of managing both a camera and syn-chronous sound recorder have discouraged it. Althoughrecording good sound remains a problem, it has becomemore feasible with the new video cameras. This has

brought the ethnographic filmmakers situation closer to

that of the classical anthropological fieldworker, engagedin participant-observation. It has also brought ethnographicfilmmaking closer to the ideal of a more personal cinemaenvisaged by the direct cinema filmmakers of the 1960s.

The implications of one-person filmmaking are wide-ranging. A single person tends to be perceived as an indi-

16 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 3, JUNE 2001

Mang Mang, in the film Lammoire dure by RossellaRagazzi.

A scene from the filmKhalfan and ZanzibarbyLina Fruzzetti, AlfredGuzzetti and kos str witha crawling title.

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vidual, whereas even two people working together consti-

tute a team, with all the associations of an institutional-ized, corporate statement this carries. Furthermore, thesmaller digital cameras are regarded, at least for the

present, as amateur cameras. In public places, they areassociated more with tourism than with film production.This perception carries over into the private realm, wheresomeone with a video camera is viewed more as a person

pursuing personal or local interests than wider institutionalones. As more people use cameras of their own, amateurcameras increasingly become associated with the idea offor us rather than for them.

These changes inevitably affect the relationship of thesubject to the filmmaker. Anyone can make the filming

process intrusive and awkward, and conversely, a team offilmmakers can often establish a close and informal rela-tionship with their subjects. It is nevertheless true thatthere is a different tone to a relationship established withan individual than with a group, even if the group is onlytwo. I believe this is partly because a film crew, or even a

pair of filmmakers, is seen as having its own internal socialdynamic, from which the subject feels, however gently,excluded. As a single individual, the filmmaker is seen tohold less of an advantage and is more exposed and vulner-able. I have found that it is possible to establish a quite dif-ferent kind of rapport with my subjects when workingalone not always more trusting, but more relaxed, moreflexible, more spontaneous and humorous, and sometimes

more confiding.Another possible consequence is that a filmmakerworking alone may be more willing to take risks, or actintuitively, or follow up unexpected opportunities. This isreinforced by the low cost of video tape compared to16mm film. A degree of experimentation with video willnot place an entire production budget in jeopardy. Perhapsmore important than cost is the sense one has of being fullyresponsible for ones actions, or of having no alternative

but to trust ones own instincts. There are no other mem-bers of a team to confer with, no pressures to avoid upset-ting the expectations of the group. Filmmaking in the pasthas often been conservative out of a misplaced profession-alism that discourages individuality unlike the improvi-

sation expected of a jazz musician, who is bound to ageneral theme but not necessarily to a particular score.

Working alone may also encourage a different attitudetoward ethnography. The immediate impressions that bearupon one when one is alone may take on greater anthropo-logical significance than the more abstract aspects of the

society one is studying. This can sometimes prove to be adisadvantage in social research, but it can also lead to anopening-out of ones perception of the nuances of peoplesrelationships, the qualities of their sensory life and thefiner details of their cultural world. I shall have more to sayabout this in relation to a video project I recently con-ducted in India.

A new media economyPerhaps in the future we will conclude that the most revolu-

tionary change brought about by the new technology is theindependence it has given filmmakers from the traditionalsources of ethnographic film funding the television, edu-cational and arts establishments. Desktop filmmaking mayhave some of the same liberating effects as the paperbackrevolution, electronic music composition and internet pub-lishing. These have not meant that better books or music or

public debate will necessarily follow, but it has meant thatmore individuals can test their talents without having to passthrough the boomgates of corporate culture.

I am speaking here initially of television, which hassponsored so much of British ethnographic filmmaking inthe past few decades. It is to the credit of British televisionthat a substantial number of innovative ethnographic films

have been made, including some of Roger Graefs studiesof British institutions4 as well as more clearly-designatedethnographic films in the Granada Disappearing Worldseries and such BBC series as Worlds Apart and Underthe Sun. It is to British televisions discredit that this will-ingness to take chances has steadily waned in recent years,and that few if any films by such important ethnographicfilmmakers as Jean Rouch, John Marshall, Ian Dunlop,Timothy Asch, Jorge Preloran and Robert Gardner haveever been shown on British television. Partly

parochialism, partly timidity, this is also symptomatic ofthe widespread television imperative to try to second-guess popular interest rather than lead it.

Freed from the need to seek television funding, ethno-graphic filmmakers are also freed from many of the con-straints that go with it: very large production budgets,oversized crews, broadcast deadlines, arbitrary filmlengths (typically 26 or 52 minutes, very occasionallylonger), the ministrations of commissioning editors, sty-listic conventions (voice-over introductions, glossy series

packaging, interviews, signposting, cracking the char-acters, horror vacui) and a general preference for exoticor controversial topics. These sorts of requirements, takentogether, make innovative ethnographic filmmaking fortelevision very hard indeed.

Funding from other institutional sources may not grantmuch more autonomy. Educational funding through

philanthropic foundations or government agencies imposes its own expectations, which, being based uponpast approaches, tend to want these to be reproduced. Themodel of the heavily-scripted American educational filmwith its orotund narration has survived many decades andappears to have gained a further lease of life on theDiscovery Channel and cable television. The sombre gen-uflexions of the Ken Burns style, or the obligatory inter-views of Disappearing World, have become increasinglythreadbare when copied by other filmmakers.

There is also the expectation that ethnographic filmswill be made primarily as teaching aids, offering knowl-edge in propositional statements and providing illustra-tions for concepts already well assimilated by the

discipline. Ethnographic films, from this viewpoint, aremeant to provide information rather than other forms ofknowledge. If they do not do this, they are generally rele-gated to the role of backdrops, to evoke the missing phys-ical presence of the societies that anthropologists havewritten about. In a broader sense, such films are expected


Qing, the subject ofQing,

the newspaperman by YiSicheng.

1. For convenience, whenI use the terms films andfilmmaking, I include alsovideos and video-making.

2. Three examples areMelissa Llewelyn-Daviesfilm The womens Olamal,Brian MosersLast of theCuiva, and the trilogy offilms on the Hamar made byJean Lydall and JoannaHead.

3. This is the programmeof the East Asian Institute ofVisual Anthropology inKunming, co-sponsored bythe IWF (Institut fr denWissenschaftlichen Film) inGermany and assisted bystaff from the GranadaCentre for VisualAnthropology at ManchesterUniversity.

4. These appeared in suchseries as The space betweenwords (1972),Decisions(1975-76), andPolice(1982).

5.Photo wallahs (1991).6. The Doon School

project was carried out withan Australian ResearchCouncil fellowship at theCentre for Cross-CulturalResearch, Australian National University.

7. The first film from theproject,Doon Schoolchronicles, was released in2000. It is distributed in theUK by the RoyalAnthropological Institute.

8. Constructing post-colonial India: Nationalcharacter and the DoonSchool. London and NewYork: Routledge, 1998.

9. Jay Ruby (2000:38-39,266-267) has also argued forethnographic films tobecome less tied to narrowconceptions of what makes agood film. Although I ambroadly in agreement withhim, I would argue that the

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cinema has evolved forms ofexpression and professionalskills that we should buildupon, not abandon. Ratherthan believing thatfilmmaking skill is secondaryto producing goodethnographic films (as hebelieves writing skill issecondary to producing goodanthropological writing), Iwould argue the reverse: thatif anything, ethnographic

filmmakers need to becomeeven more skillful andinventive. I do not believequality of thought is finallyseparable from quality ofexpression.

to be demonstrations of what is already known by the pro-ducers or their academic advisers, rather than explorationsof what is unclear to them, or that may raise new questions.This is particularly true in the English-speaking world,where ethnographic filmmaking is regarded primarily as amethod of instruction or popularization rather than a wayof conducting new research.

From time to time, ethnographic filmmakers have beenable to gain access to government arts funding. A film onwhich I collaborated in 1989-90 was partially funded in

this way.5 However, the situation was unusual in that weapplied for a documentary film fellowship rather thanfunds to make a specified film. We thus avoided the

process by which arts administrators and their adviserscontrol the sorts of films that get made. This process isusually heavily prescriptive, for it requires a film to besubstantially conceived in advance, and often evenscripted, rather than be risk-taking and exploratory.Sometimes the proposals have to go through repeatedassessments and revisions. And generally, because publicmoney is involved, it means that films must be deemedsocially relevant and be supported by production guaran-tees or television presales. This is clearly a formula forsafe films likely to appeal to cautious administrators, and

not very different in spirit from the reassurances requiredby television producers that every film project promise a popular success. In this climate, the topic assumes farmore importance than the filmmaker, even though thetopic of many a famous film a stolen bicycle, a familysdaily life would probably seem ludicrously inadequate if

put to an arts funding board. Failure is regarded as irre-sponsible and unprofessional. But as Jean Rouch hasremarked, filmmakers who attempt something difficulthave a rightto fail.

Interviews have become a staple of films made witheducational, television and arts funding, since one of thesafest ways to pitch a film for support is to frame it in alist of potential interviewees. These may be subject-areaspecialists, celebrities, representatives of local views, orwitnesses to historical events. The style has inevitablyspilled over into ethnographic film, so that filmmakershave a marked tendency to ask people to talk about theirexperiences rather than film them actually having them. Itis perhaps unfair to ethnographic filmmakers to say thatthis is quicker and easier; rather, the style has becomeentrenched in the thinking of audiences and filmmakersalike. Many first-time documentary filmmakers, accus-tomed to what they see on television, can think of no alter-native but to sit people down and interview them.

Widening perspectives

Digital video reduces the need for large-scale institutionalfunding and offers the freedom to explore a variety ofapproaches to visual anthropology. Even for those who

have been able to go their own way in the past, the experi-ence of using the new technology can be liberating andrevelatory. Video is not simply a replacement for film buta medium with its own capabilities and limitations.

I have benefited from the new technology myself, afteran initial reluctance to adopt it. Has it changed the way Iwork? In many ways it has, although the lessons I learntusing film still underpin what I do. But some of thechanges are dramatic. For example, the production budgetof my current project, which I can carry out on a modest

university research grant (and out of which I will producefive films), is less than one-tenth of my last 16mm budget,which produced only one film.6 This has largely freed mefrom the economic and stylistic constraints of the institu-tional funding mentioned above.

In 1997 I began a long-term video study of a boysboarding school in northern India. 7 The idea was suggestedto me by an Indian anthropologist, Sanjay Srivastava, whohad studied the schools relation to post-colonial lites andwhose book on the subject appeared in 1998. 8 I initiallysought television support for the project, with some suc-cess but also with misgivings. I began to realize that the

proposals I was writing were locking me into a process thatI wanted to be more open-ended and more like the projects

I had undertaken in the past. I eventually opted to work indigital video. This undoubtedly helped me to modify theorientation of the project as it evolved. I began with aninterest in the school as a site of diversity, an intersectionof different cultural strands in Indian society. But as timewent on I began to think of it more often as a carefully con-structed island of cultural homogeneity in the lives of thediverse students who passed through it. As a result, I beganfilming quite different subjects from those I had startedwith. I believe this shift would have been more difficult ifI had been committed to a 16mm film.

It is normal, of course, for ethnographic filmmakers torespond to the realities of situations as they occur, andoften to revise their projects radically in the process.Indeed, I know of few cases, and certainly none of my


Left: The characteristic desk-lockers called 'toyes' used atDoon School, a design thatoriginated at Winchester

School in England.Right: Students on the way toclasses at Doon School.

Henley, Paul. 2000.Ethnographic film:

Technology, practice andanthropological theory.Visual Anthropology 13(3):207-226.

Ruby, Jay. 2000.Picturingculture: Explorations offilm and anthropology.Chicago and London:University of ChicagoPress.

Srivastava, Sanjay. 1998.Constructing post-colonialIndia: National characterand the Doon School.London and New York:Routledge.

Vaughan, Dai. 1999.Fordocumentary. Berkeley,

Los Angeles and London:University of CaliforniaPress.

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own, in which a film turned out as it was originally envis-aged. But I believe that working in video allows the

process of transformation and evolution to take morevaried and experimental forms and to result in a widervariety of work. Ethnographic films in the three decadesfrom 1960 to 1990, when they were not dominated by a

spoken commentary, tended to be constructed around aspecific event, such as a ritual or a technical process. Orthey followed the course of a conflict or schism and its res-olution, tracing the outlines of what Victor Turner at aboutthe same time was calling social dramas. It was anapproach that stressed cases and closure. Sponsors were

partly responsible for inspiring (or imposing) thisapproach, but it also stemmed from a broader cinematicimperative to produce a particular kind of performance orexemplary product. The technical complexities of film-making, and the potentially quite disrupting appearance offilmmaking equipment, would have reinforced this adher-ence to established methods, encouraging filmmakerseither to intervene and direct the people they filmed orstand back and try to diminish the effect of their presenceas much as possible. The less cumbersome technology ofvideo not only reduces the intrusiveness of the filmmaking

process, putting the subjects more at ease, but I believealso encourages a less institutionalized approach amongthose holding the cameras, and a visual anthropology moreflexibly reflective about anthropological ideas and lessinsistent about covering events. In this regard, PaulHenleys comments (Henley 2000: 217) on the distinction

between the anthropological and the ethnographic are sug-

gestive, for the new technology, while it will undoubtedlysimplify making ethnographic accounts of particularevents, may also encourage more visually focused explo-rations of anthropological ideas, without such a heavyreliance upon words.

I found that my overall approach to filming differed in

significant ways from my work in the past. Whereas beforeit had tended to be marked by a certain anxiety, a sense ofoccasion, I found that it was now more thoughtful andobservant. The desire to achieve something was still there,

but it was less narrowly focused on familiar expository andnarrative methods. I felt more open to my surroundings andmore willing to explore my ideas about the school throughthe camera. Undoubtedly this was partly because the cir-cumstances were different this was a long-term study ofa large institution, rather than a narrower study of a familygroup but the very fact that I had chosen to use video hadalready contributed to the different scope of this project. Ifelt no obligation to produce a particular kind of result tosatisfy a funding body, academic institution, or evenmyself. I wanted to see what could be learnt about theschool through the process of filming it, and what sorts offilms might come about as a consequence. I therefore sawthe project not so much in terms of filmsper se as an inves-tigation I could make with a camera rather than (forexample) through a series of articles or a book.

This altered my approach to both content and form. Iwas more prepared to explore unfilmic material andunconventional structures. This might result in a ten-hourfilm, to be read in segments like a book, or a loosely-related group of film segments of different lengths andstyles, each suited to a different aspect of the school. I

began collecting texts from school documents and consid-

ering how these might be used. Although I was followingcertain events in the lives of the students, I was also tryingto examine the school as a cultural complex in which aes-thetic considerations had taken on great importance, oftenapproaching that of economics, politics and ideology. Iwanted particularly to explore the school through thedetails of its physical presence, which impress themselvesmore insistently upon the students than they ever couldupon an outsider. I soon found that the video cameraallowed me to make stills as I was filming, and I beganconceiving of stills as an integral part of how the filmswould be constructed. I became more open to makingvisual links and asides or rather, this kind of thinkingwas occurring more often at an earlier stage, in the filming

rather than the editing. I accepted that many of theseapproaches might be wrong for certain kinds of viewers impatient film festival audiences, or university teacherstrying to find films to use in their lectures. But I held on tothe hope that students (at the school or elsewhere) andother viewers interested in schools might respond to them,


A group of first-year boys inFoot House at The DoonSchool.

Top left: Doon Schoolstudents cross the playingfields to breakfast.Top right:ReadingShakespeare in a class at

Doon School.Above:Boy late for classesin the Doon School's MainBuilding.

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and that the project might add something useful to thegrowing anthropological literature on schools.9

Working alone, I felt freer to come and go as I pleased,instead of arriving at a place as though to an appointed

task. In a previous project in Sardinia, I had workedclosely with a Sardinian sound recordist, and because therewere two of us, I was never quite sure whether people wereresponding to him or to me. I also felt a tension about whatthey expected of us. No doubt they felt this as well. WhenI worked as a single filmmaker, these questions didntarise. The result was a different kind of rapport. I havementioned that those being filmed are quick to sense thateven two people filming them form a closed circle, with itsown internal interactions. This produces a certain socialdistance, sometimes permitting the subject a lessdemanding relationship than with a single filmmaker,whom they must engage with more directly and inti-mately; but what is gained by this separation moreautonomy for the subject, less self-consciousness is also

potentially a loss. The subject is often more reserved, lessforthcoming, more inclined to assume a persona for thesake of the film.

I found I could communicate with people more easilyfrom behind a video camera than a film camera, partly

because of the fewer technical preoccupations demandedby video and partly because I was alone. In place of con-versations, however casual, I could now often simplycoexist with people in a desultory way. This produced bothrelaxed silences and unexpected outpourings. In oneinstance it led to a completely unplanned film. A 12-year-old boy began addressing me in long monologues while

sitting outdoors, or lying on his bed in the dormitory, orwalking across the playing fields. I began recording theseencounters experimentally, without the fear (as I wouldhave had with film) that I was using up precious rawstock.He spoke of everything under the sun nature, philosophy,human relationships, history, education, books he had read,films he had seen and although I had thought of him

simply as one of the group I was filming, I eventually real-ized that he deserved a film to himself. This kind of unex-

pected by-product the possibility of going off on a tangent is, I think, one of the further benefits of the turn to video.

Filming alone, I also became aware of a subtle changein the power relations that exist between filmmakers andfilm subjects. Although my presence as an individualmay sometimes have made my subjects feel obliged toengage with me, at other times they felt they could ignoreme completely. I welcomed this informality, whichseemed to attest to a more open relationship. Andalthough the Indian students I was filming were almostinvariably polite, it was encouraging sometimes to seetheir boredom or wish to be elsewhere showing through.As time went on many of them developed a quite offhandattitude toward the whole process.

Other effects and concernsFor some years it has been possible to edit 16mm and35mm film footage on computers through a kind of hybridtechnology, but most filmmakers still worked on flatbedfilm editing machines that had changed little in design

over half a century. You worked directly with the pieces offilm, and you could hold them to the light and see the indi-vidual frames. Editing film in this way could be comparedto a handcraft, like carpentry or tailoring. But digitalediting on computers has now put the editing process atarms length, or rather at a much greater distance. You arenot actually handling any physical materials, apart from akeyboard and mouse. For many people the difference iscomparable to shifting from writing in longhand to using atypewriter or word processor, with some rather paralleleffects. Ones ideas often appear to emerge more effort-lessly. Nonlinear computer editing has become theaccepted way of editing video material, coming as a greatrelief to video editors after years of dubbing scenes from

one tape to another.There is less clear testimony about this than about the

use of video cameras, but its effect on how films are con-structed may be even greater. Video editors speak of thegreatly increased speed that computer editing has giventhem in finding shots and manipulating them. For me it has


Left: Stainless steeltableware used at DoonSchool.Right: The blue and greyshirt of the Doon Schoolgames uniform.

Left: Measuring a student atDoon School.Right: Studying Sanskrit atDoon School.Right below:In an English

class at Doon School.

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certainly reduced the frustrations of hunting for materialand has given me much more freedom to try out differentways of editing it. But this same speed, at least for many

professional editors, has also led to shorter editing sched-ules and hastier decision-making. The distinguished filmeditor Dai Vaughan has said that it was during thosemoments of searching in a bin for a shot that he often hadhis best ideas. Even the greater volume of material oftengenerated by video may, paradoxically, dictate a faster

pace by forcing filmmakers to select more quickly andarbitrarily what they are going to use, excluding the rest.Computer editing also makes available a bewildering arrayof transitions and special effects, which may tempt theunwary into purely cosmetic excesses. Perhaps of moreconcern (or delight, depending on your point of view) is

the extent to which digital images can be altered. Vaughan(1999:188) is worried about the gradual erosion of our

belief in the indexical link between film (and by extension,video) and reality. This is not simply a matter of eviden-tiary or forensic value. Manipulations in photography havealways occurred, but we may finally reach the day whenthe assumption of a privileged relation between a photo-

graph and its object, an assumption which has held goodfor 150 years and on which cin-actuality is founded, willhave ceased to be operative.

There is one further effect which I have not heard dis-cussed but have observed in my own case. The moreunmediated, even disembodied, quality of the videofootage as it appears on the computer screen, perhaps para-doxically, has created a new ambience of intimacy with mysubjects, unencumbered by the distractions of rotatingsprockets, tangles of film and tape splicers. They seem toexist in a more rarefied and quintessential form, leading toa more intense kind of concentration upon them and theirsurroundings. But this same transparency produces, in itsturn, a tendency toward more abstract modes of thinkingthan when editing film, where one is perhaps more preoc-cupied with the sheer mechanics of the constructive

process. In my case, I saw my subjects in a larger contextand was more concerned about its power over them. I foundthat video editing fostered a more distanced and analyticalapproach as well as a sense of intimacy. I should like toknow if other filmmakers have experienced this effect.

New ways of shooting and editing ethnographic filmsmay result from the technology now becoming available,

but this will be only one of the results. New formats willbe created, and new ways of looking at them. There arealready video disc cameras, CD-ROMs, DVDs and theinternet, with DVD-authoring and production now

becoming feasible on the desktop. Because of theincreased flexibility in postproduction and viewing prac-tices, we can expect to see some ethnographic films takingmore specialized and unconventional forms. They may noteven be recognizable as films as we have known them, butmore extended studies comparable to monographs or PhDdissertations. Out of the same raw materials, films can bemade in various versions, with different levels of contex-tual material and interpretation. And with the lower costsof video, one need not necessarily make films for largeaudiences. I have edited several films from the Indianschool material primarily for the students themselves andtheir parents. I also plan to put compilations of materialtogether for scholars interested in special topics, such as

childrens games and pastimes. The result of this new-wonfreedom may be that some ethnographic films becomemore unwieldy and difficult, but this is perhaps one ofthe necessary growing pains of a more mature and inter-esting visual anthropology.


The cumbersome technologyof 16 mm film compared to avideo camcorder (see p. 15),which records both image andsound. Above: 16 mm filmingin Uganda, 1968. Top left:David MacDougall andJames Blue during filming ofKenya Boran, 1972. Topcentre:David MacDougallduring filming ofTempus debaristas, Sardinia 1992. Topright:Judith MacDougallwith Nagra, Sennheisermicrophone and cat, 1982.

EditingGood-bye old manwith Thomas Woody Minipini,1976.

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macdougall is digital video changing ethnographic film

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