Andrew Gingerich

Filmmaker/Educator

About

Andrew Gin­gerich is a film­mak­er whose work explores notions of fam­i­ly, dis­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­ties, region­al alle­giances, and the bound­aries of fic­tion. He lives and teach­es in Michi­gan’s Upper Peninsula.

Self-Consciousness, Performance, and the Technical Monster

In Notes on One-Per­son Shoot­ing, Joel DeMott dis­cuss­es the pit­falls of mak­ing doc­u­men­tary films with mul­ti-per­son crews and cum­ber­some, high­ly-vis­i­ble equip­ment. The “machine-rid­den” film­mak­er, sur­round­ed by “extra­ne­ous materiel—lights, booms, radio mics, cables, cas­es of back-up gear” is inevitably dis­tract­ed by the tech­ni­cal minu­ti­ae of film­mak­ing, and forgets—or is fun­da­men­tal­ly unable—to forge a gen­uine rela­tion­ship with their sub­ject. She dubs this cyborg-like, over­laden film­mak­er the “Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster.” Such a pres­ence is under­stand­ably intim­i­dat­ing to any doc­u­men­tary sub­ject because the machines, lights, and tech­ni­cal crew invade and alter the space. They make the subject’s home feel less their home, and they present an insur­mount­able bar­ri­er between the mak­er and the subject.

DeMott’s pro­posed solu­tion to this prob­lem is, per­haps iron­i­cal­ly, a tech­ni­cal one: recent advance­ments in film stocks and cam­era tech­nol­o­gy allowed film­mak­ers of the ear­ly ’80s the free­dom to shoot with­out the assis­tance of a sup­port crew, oper­at­ing the sound and cam­era them­selves. This method of pro­duc­tion allowed film­mak­ers to be more agile and, most impor­tant to DeMott, to give pri­ma­cy to their rela­tion­ship with their sub­ject, rather than the rela­tion­ship with their crew. This is sure­ly a noble goal, but I remain skep­ti­cal that a reduc­tion in the scale of the pro­duc­tion and the vis­i­ble com­plex­i­ty of the equip­ment actu­al­ly solves the prob­lem of an alien­at­ing, anx­i­ety-induc­ing Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster, or that this prob­lem should be solved.

16mm cam­eras of the type used by DeMott and Jeff Kreines in pro­duc­tion of their film Sev­en­teen weigh in excess of ten pounds and are paint­ed com­plete­ly black. They perch, gar­goyle-like, pro­trud­ing for­ward from the operator’s shoul­der, who then press­es their eye to the eye­piece and (tra­di­tion­al­ly) squeezes their oth­er eye shut while mak­ing a sort of invol­un­tary gri­mace that sug­gests either deep con­cen­tra­tion or extreme pain. The lens of the cam­era reflects and dis­torts who­ev­er it points at, a mechan­i­cal cyclo­pean eye. The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion has fur­ther shrunk the doc­u­men­tary filmmaker’s tools, but the form fac­tor remains rough­ly the same: the tech­ni­cal mon­ster may be get­ting small­er and lighter, but it is alive and well.

Fig. 1: Two filmmakers demonstrate their camera grimaces: Joel DeMott (left, c. 1980) and Ross McElwee (right, 2009).
Fig. 1: Two film­mak­ers demon­strate their cam­era gri­maces: Joel DeMott (left, c. 1980) and Ross McEl­wee (right, 2009).

The fact of the cam­era is hard to ignore, but sub­jects seem to do it almost instinc­tu­al­ly. DeMott observes that “if a movie crew begins fol­low­ing peo­ple who are not actors, they will try to act as if they’re uncon­scious of the fact.” She’s refer­ring to the type of large-scale pro­duc­tions that make use of mul­ti-per­son crews, but the same crit­i­cism could just as eas­i­ly be lev­eled against sin­gle-shoot­er films in which sub­jects self-con­scious­ly ignore the cam­era and speak to the film­mak­er, in their best imi­ta­tion of what a con­ver­sa­tion between the two of them would be like if there wasn’t a giant black box point­ing its unblink­ing eye at them from a dis­tance of “a foot-and-a-half to three feet” (DeMott 6). In a sense, as DeMott argues, this close posi­tion­ing of the cam­era is a ges­ture at hon­esty: “The film­mak­er is there. And play­ing unaware is incon­ceiv­able when you can reach out and slap some­one.” On the oth­er hand, the brazen pres­ence of a cam­era makes self-con­scious­ness an imme­di­ate and ever-present concern.

It isn’t just that the cam­era cuts an impos­ing sil­hou­ette; the aware­ness of a cam­era of any size, posi­tion, or prox­im­i­ty is a pow­er­ful cat­a­lyst. We are cog­nizant of the pow­er cam­eras pos­sess, and in an era of ubiq­ui­tous imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, we under­stand that the impli­ca­tions of a small cam­era are the same as the impli­ca­tions of a large cam­era: this is being record­ed.

Fig. 2: Interrotron, the two-headed monster.
Fig. 2: Inter­ro­tron, the two-head­ed monster.

Errol Mor­ris has attempt­ed to side­step this issue by devel­op­ing the “Inter­ro­tron,” a mod­i­fied teleprompter that dis­plays the interviewer’s face in line with the camera’s lens. The result of con­duct­ing inter­views with this par­tic­u­lar Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster is that the sub­ject main­tains direct eye con­tact with the camera/​viewer, but more impor­tant­ly, the edi­fice of a giant device that demands the subject’s undi­vid­ed atten­tion push­es every oth­er con­di­tion of the set­ting to the periph­ery: “For the first time, I could be talk­ing to some­one, and they could be talk­ing to me and at the same time look­ing direct­ly into the lens of the cam­era. Now, there was no look­ing off slight­ly to the side. No more faux first per­son. This was the true first per­son” (Mor­ris). In this way, sub­jects are encour­aged to for­get every­thing except their rela­tion­ship to the inter­view­er. And yet, this comes at the cost of forc­ing an even more aggres­sive con­fronta­tion with the machin­ery of filmmaking. 

Beyond pos­ing sim­ple pro­ce­dur­al ques­tions (“How am I expect­ed to behave?”) the fact of a cam­era rais­es the stakes of the inter­ac­tion because it implies the scruti­ny and judg­ment of an unknow­able audi­ence. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic for the sub­ject, who is denied vital infor­ma­tion about the expec­ta­tions their audi­ence has for them. As Erv­ing Goff­man explains, the per­for­mances we all craft in every­day life rely on our under­stand­ing of our audience:

We can appre­ci­ate the cru­cial impor­tance of the infor­ma­tion that the indi­vid­ual ini­tial­ly pos­sess­es or acquires con­cern­ing his fel­low par­tic­i­pants, for it is on the basis of the ini­tial infor­ma­tion that the indi­vid­ual starts to define the sit­u­a­tion and starts to build up lines of respon­sive action. The individual’s ini­tial pro­jec­tion com­mits him to what he is propos­ing to be and requires him to drop all pre­tense of being oth­er things.

(Goff­man 11)

If this is true, the prob­lem posed by stand­ing in front of a cam­era is an inter­est­ing one. We per­form in dif­fer­ent ways for dif­fer­ent peo­ple in dif­fer­ent set­tings: we are, in effect, dif­fer­ent peo­ple to our boss, our fam­i­ly, and to strangers in the air­port; but how do we per­form when the audi­ence of our per­for­mance is poten­tial­ly every­one? Sub­jects still seek to dra­ma­tize and ide­al­ize them­selves through the meth­ods Goff­man describes, but they are denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “accept minor cues as a sign of some­thing impor­tant” about their per­for­mance, which serve as checks on their behav­ior (Goff­man 51). This can some­times have the effect of increased self-con­scious­ness, as the sub­ject sub­sti­tutes cues from their real audi­ence with the imag­ined reac­tions of an audi­ence of their own con­struc­tion; rather than adapt­ing the per­for­mance based on feed­back from an actu­al audi­ence, they reg­u­late their pre­sen­ta­tion of self based on their lim­it­ed infer­ences about the film’s even­tu­al viewers.

It might be this anx­i­ety that is the cause of some of the more per­for­ma­tive and self-con­scious moments in Sev­en­teen. When Buck insists that he can’t hear any­thing more about Church Mouse’s injury, and yet seems unable to speak about any­thing else, it may be because he rec­og­nizes that his dis­tress is dra­mat­i­cal­ly important—thus appeas­ing the Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster stand­ing three feet away from him—and that it presents him as being a loy­al and car­ing friend, a qual­i­ty that the film’s audi­ence will sure­ly find admirable.

As is the case with much social per­for­mance, these per­for­mances are fre­quent­ly trans­par­ent to an audi­ence: “The arts of pierc­ing an individual’s efforts at cal­cu­lat­ed unin­ten­tion­al­i­ty seem bet­ter devel­oped than our capac­i­ty to manip­u­late our own behav­ior, so that … the wit­ness is like­ly to have the advan­tage over the actor” (Goff­man 8–9). Still, Goff­man cau­tions that “an hon­est, sin­cere, seri­ous per­for­mance is less firm­ly con­nect­ed with the sol­id world than one might at first assume,” and that a skill­ful, con­vinc­ing per­for­mance is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a more accu­rate one, only a more prac­ticed one (71). These unprac­ticed per­for­ma­tive moments are sig­nif­i­cant because they allow us insight into the subject’s process of craft­ing a uni­ver­sal front that they feel com­fort­able pre­sent­ing not with­in the con­fines of a spe­cif­ic set­ting, but to the entire world.

In this way, the Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster pro­vides a com­plete­ly nov­el space for sub­jects to work through their iden­ti­ty on a grand scale. Con­fronting the Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster, com­ing into con­flict with the incon­sis­ten­cies between per­for­mances craft­ed for oth­er sit­u­a­tions, and work­ing inte­grate those per­for­mances into an unprob­lem­at­ic self fit for a glob­al audi­ence is an act of courage—and pos­si­bly hubris. It is not uncom­mon for doc­u­men­tary sub­jects to mis­judge their audi­ence and come off as unin­ten­tion­al­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic or trans­par­ent. These mis­judg­ments can be inten­tion­al­ly exploit­ed by film­mak­ers, such as in Errol Morris’s Gates of Heav­en, in which Phillip Har­berts is depict­ed as delud­ed, self-impor­tant, and pre­oc­cu­pied with what appear to be mean­ing­less acco­lades. This sure­ly would not have been the intent of his per­for­mance, but it could be argued that his inex­pe­ri­ence with per­form­ing in this set­ting has revealed some­thing about his moti­va­tions than he would have pre­ferred to keep hid­den from pub­lic view.

This dynam­ic can also alert audi­ences to their own posi­tion in rela­tion to the work. In Can­ni­bal Tours, the con­de­scend­ing tone of the Ger­man tourists as they dis­cuss the lifestyle of the Iat­mul peo­ple is not mere­ly an indict­ment of their colo­nial arro­gance; it impli­cates the view­er as well, because the tourists, assum­ing West­ern audi­ences share the same atti­tudes and will not judge them harsh­ly, feel com­plete­ly com­fort­able hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion while a cam­era is point­ed at them.

Short of using hid­den cam­eras and film­ing sub­jects with­out their pri­or con­sent, it seems unlike­ly that a solu­tion can be found to the prob­lems of self-con­scious­ness and “uncon­vinc­ing” per­for­mances, and that it is like­ly impos­si­ble to stop a cam­era from alter­ing what it sees. Instead, I would sug­gest that these per­for­mances, though often unprac­ticed, are no less gen­uine than any oth­er social per­for­mance, and may even offer greater insight. If we are defined by the col­lec­tion of diverse and some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry per­for­mances we prac­tice, watch­ing some­one face down the Tech­ni­cal Mon­ster and attempt to rec­on­cile those con­flicts to per­form as a ful­ly-inte­grat­ed self allows us to glimpse the hid­den machin­ery that con­structs these fronts.

Works Cited