Talking heads

If we look at this cartoon strip of how the film is made up, we see that it is basically constructed out of human heads giving facts and opinions, sometimes with great feeling and emotion, interspersed by photographic shots, with the appropriate commentary linking one point to the other.

Such a film can be made very rapidly. The people to be interviewed are set up by a researcher and the entire report could be shot in one day. in the morning, the two members of parliament could be filmed at their offices, either at the House of Commons or elsewhere in London, and in the afternoon the team could go off to the East End of London where the housing problem is to be investigated - general shots could be taken in the house, on the streets, and the person who lives there interviewed. The total film report might easily be 15 to 20 minutes long.

I am not knocking this technique; it could be an excellent report. If the questions to be raised and the shots to illustrate these points have been very carefully worked out, then this report will give a very clear picture of the present state of poverty in Britain: what the two major parties expect to do about it and also, to some extent, the feeling of what it’s like to live in these buildings. But that’s the crucial point; only to a limited extent do we get a true idea of what it is like to be poverty stricken.

Now I would hope that a documentary on this subject would go much deeper. We wouldn’t just get opinions; we would actually get a feeling of what it is like to live in such poverty and what effect this has on the family. If such families are to be helped, it is not just a question of money but a question of understanding; the ability to sympathise with those less privileged than oneself and help them because you understand their feelings of the miseries inflicted -on them through no fault of their own.

This film would take a very different shape. The documentary film gives much more scope to the cameraman and the director. It might run something like this if we look at a cartoon strip:

We see a well-dressed woman and a child in a pram shopping in a supermarket - we could use some imagination here. We want to get across the point that this sort of family isn’t able to buy all the rich goods that other people can buy - perhaps a trivial point but the film can emphasise what it feels like to walk past these piles of food. The camera can dwell on tins of salmon, tins of tongue, expensive fruit, expensive biscuits. As she walks past these rows of tins, we see her face and the child’s, and then we see the small amount of food - the few potatoes, cheese and eggs - which she has in her basket. It is not just a question of shooting tins of rich food. Here is where the cameraman can use his skill, given time. Tins of food and fresh fruit shot with a wide-angled lens from a low position, are over-emphasized and look particularly attractive if shot in this way. This all adds to the feeling we are trying to get
across.