Another Media 5 post from April 20 2015:

So I just showed the rough cut for the first documentary project this semester. For this project I’ve teamed up with Ajeet, and we’re in the process of creating two very different documentaries. As has happened with most groups in the studio, we started out collaborating on both films, but gradually delegated and diverged so that we’d handle one documentary each. The one I’m handling is a simple topic: the awkward silence on trains. It basically consists of footage recorded on board trains, observing the absolute lack of sound and conversation between strangers.

The shooting process was simple enough, yet brought with it its own set of challenges. I was only recording from the camera of my iPhone, which allowed me to be as covert as possible, since the obvious presence of a camera wouldn’t go down so well if I was pointing it in the faces of strangers. Still, I had to be careful with it. As soon as I started looking down at the phone screen and looked at what it was recording, or tried to adjust the angle, it was an instant give-away that I was doing more than scrolling on Facebook. I tipped off a few commuters, and that made for an even awkwarder silence.

The interesting and debatable thing about this whole project was how uncomfortable I felt as the recorder. In our readings there’s a lot of talk about how the presence of a camera inevitably affects those in front of it, but we’ve got to remember it affects whoever’s behind it too. I felt like I was, and I definitely was, intruding on these commuters’ privacy without their permission by recording them without notifying them. But the justification for this was that it was for a documentary trying to highlight the nature of the wider public, and not to highlight or zone in on any particular individual. Is it still wrong to go ahead with it? It’s debatable.

Another strange point that I picked up during this project was something that someone brought up during the presenting of the rough cut. They had noticed that the cut of the documentary featured almost exclusively male commuters. There were hardly any shots that had females as the focus. I don’t think I noticed this during filming or editing, but once it was pointed out it was impossible to ignore. Was there some sort of unconscious bias or sexism at play here, that influenced me either when I was choosing who to record, or which shots to include in the cut? It’s strange, but now that I think about it, it’s possible that I did feel a notch less creepier filming guys than I did girls, and maybe that’s a product of the ideology and attitudes permeated by society today. Should I feel more at ease filming males than females? Is it because I’m a guy? Is it because somewhere, deep inside, there is still the notion that females are more vulnerable and thus off limits compared to males?

Things to ponder.