Wiseman Interview

After reading the discussion with Fredrick Wiseman and Robert Kramer it is easier to understand why Wiseman makes his movies the way he does. When speaking with Kramer it is obvious that Wiseman is very outspoken and set in his ways, but he is extremely intelligent. One thing they agree on is that the film crew must be invisible to the world around them. However, being invisible doesn’t always matter according to Wiseman. He says, “My experience is that 99% of the time the people who are being photographed don't react to the camera or the tape recorder and almost no time is required to acclimatize them.” There is evidence in Wiseman’s work because he only filmed for High School for five weeks and the students and faculty barely noticed the camera crew. Wiseman must have magical powers because I personally find this hard to believe. I do think people who are being photographed might not react to the camera but I think it takes a good amount of time for them to adapt to the cameras being there. Though Wiseman counters when he said, “And for reasons that I don't understand, whether it's vanity, indifference, media saturation, or incapacity to act otherwise, most of us don't have the capacity to act other than as we do, the presence of the equipment and the people operating the equipment makes no difference at all.” I agree that if you film someone long enough his or her actual character is bound to come out, eventually. An interesting part of the discussion was camera movement within the film “Comedie Francasie.” Wiseman talks about how he was able to shoot Dom Juan and then go back and look at it. If it wasn’t right he would go back to shoot it again. He could do this because the next night everything was the same, same actors were in the same spots, same costumes, and the same make up. This gave him the ability to shoot it straight on, and then with zoom (with good lighting), and then close ups with a fixed lens. I found this interesting because when you watch or when you are making a documentary you don’t think about re-filming things multiple times because you just assume it is real time. I also found the discussion about censoring very interesting and I greatly respect Wiseman for not letting TV station censor his work. He says, “The filmmaker isn't trying to impose this on anybody, but on the other hand, I'm not going to cut my own work because somebody doesn't like the word ‘motherfucker.’” Most documentaries are trying to make an argument or simply a point and bad language is involved so censoring could be detrimental to the story and the argument.