Re: Making nature natural

[P3D Marvin Jones <72657.3276@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> This is simply not true. There are true documentary-style filmmakers who
> set up cameras in blinds for months, even years, and shoot in
> unspeakably high ratios so that they might capture action as a true
> observer. In fact, some of them are conducting and documenting
> scientific research as well, and any "entire" manipulation of reality
> would not be tolerated by the scientific community.
> 
And when the Discovery Channel chooses to show a month-long or even a year-long
documentary of this unedited footage, it STILL won't be "natural," because it
will represent a choice on the cameraman's part to photograph this specific
event/object from this specific angle, giving it an "unnatural" significance
over everything else that was going on just outside the camera's view. But the
Discovery Channel doesn't show year-long documentaries. They show hour-long
documentaries. And every time the image on the screen changes, there has been a
gap in time and often in location which is being eliminated. And the
juxtaposition of shots tells a story that is being imposed on the footage by the
editor. Take, for instance, a shot of a chimp jumping up and down. Cut to a shot
of a lion stalking, and the chimp is excitedly warning others. Take the same
shot of the chimp, and cut to a shot of a cute female chimp, and now he's horny.
The identical shot, two totally different meanings. And this kind of
manipulation happens a couple of hundred times in every documentary you've ever
seen. Every little sequence is made up of several different shots taken at
different times -- sometimes radically different times -- and placed together in
an "unnatural" relationship to each other to depict an event that never really
took place as you are seeing it. It's just representative of something that
might have happened or that probably happened, not something that did happen.


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