“Cinima Verite”
The Cinema Verite movement worked on a very minimal, free moving style of film making which allowed them to move around the location with just their cameras.The free roaming “Candid” Camera idea developed by Drew associates preceeded the work of The Cinema Verite movement, working on 400 ft of film this style can be found in such films as Robert Drew’s “Primary” and D.A Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back”. Following their Manifesto of : -
- hand held cameras
- ditch the tripod and dolly
- don’t use overlaid sound,questions or ask anyone to do anything
In the class we watched a few clips from both the above mentioned films, I found the whole combination of the above restrictions from the Dogma 95 manifesto to be refreshing and insightful in the capturing and documenting the situations, it allows you to create your own opinion without the guidance of a narrator always telling you about what’s going on. You can see where the whole idea of capturing the scene and atmosphere in a film, television program, concert or Documentary has come from. In both the films the camera takes your around and allows you to explore the many moments building up to the main event and showing you aspects you would not normally encounter anywhere else.
I found a clip that we were shown in class and I feel this is a clear example of cinema veirte at work, the idea of interacting with the space around but not disrupting or interacting with the subjects in the room, since seeing this I have become drawn to not using a tri-pod and practicing to keep as steady hand as I can, but I feel the shake of the camera keeps to the realism of this piece and in the creation of other pieces, For the artefacts I will be working tri-pod free and see how it turns out. The Idea of not becoming to familier with your surroundings and setting your camera up almost as a point of view style shots and let the subjects around provied the narrative and information.
