While producing our media artefact we maintained the practices set out in our ethics charter although, I have come to understand that there shouldn’t be a blanket set of ethics applied to every production. Ethics may change depending on the shooting conditions, the subjects you’re dealing with and the kind of content being made. For this project my ethics were geared towards transparency with the audience.

“Some viewers suspect that a documentary is unreliable if it manipulates events that are filmed” (Film Art: An Introduction, 2016, pp. 279). Although this doesn’t pertain strictly to ethics, this statement stuck with me while editing elements of the film. There is allot of ambiguity around our responsibility to show events chronologically. This was evident in the film ‘Wolf Pack’ (Moselle, C, 2015) viewed earlier in the semester. In our series we did manipulate the timeline of events to render a more interesting story. We also shot some voice over and interviews retrospectively. Initially I’d said “Don’t manipulate the series of events” I’m going to change this on the carter to say “Manipulating order of events is okay, so long as this doesn’t imply non-truthful messaging.”

“There is no objective truth, just subjective truth” (Errol Morris, 2004). I want to emphasis this for future projects and announce it openly to the audience. So long as the audience understands that documentary aesthetics support the film maker’s perspective, I think commenting on truth through filmic techniques is acceptable. A way to do so ethically might be to open with a disclaimer message.

One concept I am going to add to the ethics charter is, a participant must give approval for the way they physically appear on camera. This might sound vein however, I’ve watched many documentaries where people are shot in an unflattering way and the images are used to villainize or embarrass. For me stepping in front of the camera was a very daunting thing, I found myself casting a lot of judgement over myself when watching the rushes back. We live is such a hyper visual society where image in some ways, informs identity. I was first struck by this idea when reading that the famous Afghan Girl portrait shot by Steve Mccurry was not appreciated or welcomed by the participant, Sharbat Gula didn’t want her face to be shot in this way and even guarded her face from the camera (The Wire, 2019). Therefore, a subject must approve of the way they look on camera.

References-

1. Banks, D 2010, ‘Tweeting in court: why reporters must be given guidelines’, The Guardian, 15 December, viewed 25 November 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/dec/15/tweeting-court-reporters-julian-assange>.
2.  Bordwell, D, Thompson, K & Smith, J 2016, Film Art: An Introduction, 11th edn, McGraw-Hill, Melbourne, pp. 167.
   Mediamusic, e-journal. (2012, Dec, 12). The Thin Blue Line (1988) fragment. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjSrTUkqKbA
3. Ribhu, 2019, ‘You’ll Never See the Iconic Photo of the ‘Afghan Girl’ the Same Way Again’, The Wire, 12th March, Viewed 28 May 2020, https://thewire.in/media/afghan-girl-steve-mccurry-national-geographic
4. Thomas, S 2015, ‘Wolfpack and the ethics of documentary filmmaking’, The Conversation, 14 September, Viewed 28 May 2020, http://theconversation.com/wolfpack-and-the-ethics-of-documentary-filmmaking-47086
5. Wolfpack 2015, DVD, Kotva Films, Manhatten, NYC, directed by Crystal Moselle.