Chapter Two

Question 2: Why Are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Filmmaking?

            Within this chapter Nichols discusses how documentaries represent the world, the ethics of representing others, the overall purpose of ethics, and the filmmakers, people and audience. He starts with the 3 ways documentary engages with the world by representing it.

1    1. Documentaries offer us a likeness or depiction of the world that bears a recognizable familiarity.

This is based on the belief that “we see what was there before the camera it must be real (it really existed or happened)” (Nichols 42). Also the ability of the photographic image to reproduce the image before it, its indexical, makes us believe that it is reality itself represented in front of us, while the story or proposal presents a distinct way of regarding this reality.

2    2. Documentaries also stand for or represent the interests of others.

Documentary filmmakers often provide the role of the public representatives.

3    3. Documentaries may represent the world in the same way a lawyer may represent a client’s interests. They make a case fore a particular interpretation of the evidence before us.

They don’t not simply stand for other or represent them in ways they cannot represent themselves. However, they actively make a case or propose an interpretation to win consent or influence opinion. Nichols gives The Selling of the Pentagon as an example, which “represents the case that the U.S. military aggressively fuels the perception of its own indispensability and its enormous need for continued, preferably increased funding” (Nichols 44).

When it comes to ethics of representing others in non-fiction or documentary the “people” are treated as social actors rather than professional actors. A social actor is basically someone who lives their life more or less as they would normally with cameras. Their value to the filmmaker consists not in what a contractual relationship requires but in that their own lives embody. Nichols says, “Their value resides not in the ways in which they disguise or transform their everyday behavior and personality but in the ways in which their everyday behavior and personality serve the needs of the filmmaker” (Nichols 46). Of course like for all films, you must obtain a release form for anyone filmed.

The importance of ethics especially comes in to question when you are filming someone’s real life. With questions like should we disrupt someone’s life to tell he/she that they’re making a huge mistake? Or that the film could be used as legal evidence against him/her? Nichols gives a common litmus test for answer many of these ethics issues, which is the principle of “informed consent” (Nichols 46). In other words, the participants should be informed of the possible consequences of their participation.

Relating filmmakers, people, and of course the audience is very important when it comes to documentary films. Nichols gives us the most common formulation of this three-way relationship.

•      I speak about them to you. Basically the filmmaker takes on a personal persona, either directly or through someone else (59).
•     It speaks about them (or it) to us. This one has a sense of separation between the speaker and the audience. The film or video appears to arrive, addressed to the audience, from a source that lack “individuality” (63).  
•     I (or we) speak about us to you. This one puts the filmmaker into a position of separation from those he or she represents to a position of commonality with them (65).