In a recent post we talked about the ethical questions raised by the At Home study. It seems only fair that we now turn the lens on ourselves and ask some of the same questions.
As Toronto filmmaker, Manfred Becker says, “there are moral questions raised at every point in this project, including the filmmaking process. What’s my moral position making money off of people who live in such precarious situations?”
The NFB has a general policy of not offering compensation to the subjects of their documentaries. For Becker, this presents a serious dilemma: “During filming, the project manager might be there and the case manager might be there and the sound person and the camera person and the director… the only person who’s not getting paid is the participant. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s just not on that I make a living off the misery of others. I’m not assuming a “holier than thou” position but that’s how I feel and I want to live by that.”
Working or giving?
“One way of looking at this,” says Barbara Russell, who works and teaches in the field of bioethics, “is to consider what it is the participants are doing when they’re being filmed. Are they offering up their story as a gift? Or are they taking part in the work of advocating for the Housing First program? If the former, then perhaps some kind of financial return is neither expected nor needed. If the latter, then perhaps one could say that they are at work and therefore should be compensated in some way.”
“The idea of compensating participants is an age old subject in documentary,” says Michelle van Beusekom, Assistant Director General of the NFB’s English Program. “Some people think that money complicates the documentary filmmaking relationship….that if doc subjects are paid, then the motivation for participating becomes murky and what results can start to become performative rather than authentic. At the NFB our practice is not to pay a fee to participants although we do compensate if shooting with us means someone has to take time off work. We may cover meals, babysitting, transportation or other costs incurred as a result of the filming.”
And just to be clear, documentary filmmaking is rarely profitable. When Becker talks about making a living “off the misery of others,” he means that he’s collecting a salary for his work. Same thing for the cameraman and sound person he mentions in his example. As for the program manager and case manager he refers to, they too would be collecting their salaries, not profiting from the documentary. As van Beusekom points out, “Here At Home will never make money. It’s an online project available for free. Making this project is not a matter of creating a product to sell to the marketplace; it’s an exercise in using documentary storytelling to promote reflection and dialogue around a social crisis.”
Raw material
But as van Beusekom notes, compensation is only one of the ethical questions that documentary filmmakers have to deal with. “There are fundamental dilemmas about using people’s lives as the raw material for a film. For Here At Home, we did a lot of front end work with producers, directors, the commission. We consulted with an ethicist on informed consent, we developed a protocol for how the project is explained, talking through the implications of being in a film to make sure people are comfortable sharing their story. And there’s a rough cut screening for participants. We tried to provide as many opportunities as possible to make sure people are comfortable sharing their stories.”
A still from Lynne Stopkewich's Here At Home film, "A Model Person"
In the past, the ethical hurdles involved in documentary filmmaking have been too much for Vancouver filmmaker Lynne Stopkewich, “It’s been a long time since I worked in documentary format largely because it’s very daunting and it’s a huge responsibility. You don’t know how the participants are going to feel about the finished film now or five years from now when their lives may be very different. I mostly work in dramatic film and TV and that’s very different because it’s all manufactured. With documentaries, these are real people that I’m representing but, at the same time, it’s still a representation and audiences may choose to interpret that representation in ways I never intended. So worrying about all that can be overwhelming. Film is powerful. But that said, when this project came up I jumped in with both feet because the material was so challenging and different and because this project is very collaborative – we’re collaborating with the participants.”
The courage to be visible
For her part, van Beusekom believes that the moral dilemmas posed by documentary filmmaking raise the question of why people participate in them in the first place. “Ideally people participate out of a desire to share. For some it can be deeply affirming to be listened to. Others may be motivated by the wish that one’s story might help someone else.”
This is exactly what drew Mark Wroblewski, to take part in the Here At Home film, Honestly Painful. He remembers the moment he decided to participate in the documentary project. “I saw [Olympic gold medallist] Clara Hughes talking on TV about her problems with depression and I said to myself, if she can do it, why can’t I? I thought, if I can help people by telling my story, then I should do it. Especially young people out there with problems of addiction and mental illness – they need to be given some hope that things can get better. And also, to be very honest, I like being in front of the camera. I’m a people-person and I like sharing.”
Paula Goering, At Home lead researcher, thinks that the Here At Home participants are offering us a gift by telling their stories on camera. “Many of the participants have been, in a sense, invisible for a long time. For them to be willing to share their experiences with the world in this way – it’s very brave.”
What about you? How would you react if you were asked to participate in a documentary. Would you be willing to tell the world your story on camera? Would you do it for free?
N.B. The photo at the top of the post is a production still from La Fleur de l’Age, a 1966 fiction film co-produced by the NFB. That’s the great Michel Brault getting very Cinéma Direct with a young Geneviève Bujold. The film has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject at hand; but the image was too good to resist.
7 comments
Sandra says:
Jun 29, 2012
“…we developed a protocol for how the project is explained, talking through the implications of being in a film to make sure people are comfortable sharing their story.”
Can you clarify that a bit and explain to readers what you told participants? Exactly what are the implications of being in a film, especially for someone with mental health issues and a background of homelessness?
Thanks!
Oisin Curran says:
Jul 3, 2012
Great question! The short answer is that the filmmakers sit down with the participants (and, always, a representative from the Mental Health Commission) and talk through what it will be like to have a representation of oneself online – not just now but a year from now and 5,10 years from now. Next, when filming begins, the directors show the participants footage so they can respond to how they look on camera. This is meant to be another chance for them to reflect on how they feel about seeing themselves on camera (and another chance to opt out, if they wish). And then there’s the rough cut screening to see what context that footage has been put in. Finally, the participants are shown the finished film and have the right to withdraw their consent to have the film go online (this has already happened twice so far). I’ve asked one of the directors to give us some more insight on how this process actually takes place in practice and will post the answer in this thread as soon as I hear back.
Oisin Curran says:
Jul 3, 2012
Ok, here’s what Toronto filmmaker Manfred Becker has to say on the matter: “I describe to participants the process, that we are not ‘mass media’, but a website done in collaboration with the MHCC, and most importantly that they have a chance to pull out once they see the cut. I am absolutely clear on one thing, though: once a participant agrees to how we represent them in the web doc, and it goes on-line, it is out there, for eternity across the universe.”
That last point is a very important one. Even if a participant were to ask for a film to be taken off the website, the film could easily have been embedded and/or copied elsewhere on the web. So once it’s online, it’s there for the foreseeable future.
Jack says:
Sep 8, 2012
It’s the same rules that apply with literary jurlnaoism; you’re still dealing with the feel of the facts. Even when you’re working with actual video, I think it’s easy to manipulate footage so the same facts’ can draw different conclusions.I’m OK with using animation to deal with memory, the same way I’m OK with the poet William Carlos Williams telling the true story’ of Paterson with his book-length poem. There are just as many ways to tell true stories as there are to tell fictional ones.
Liz McLean says:
Jul 4, 2012
You should have paid them something. This “giving us their story as a gift” is the most saccharine self-justification I’ve ever seen anywhere. It is grossly unfair that the only person not earning something for the days work is the participant, undoubtedly the poorest person present. That’s why poor people are stuck in poverty. Rather than give them income support, middle class people always prefer to give funds to other middle class people to film them, study them, analyze them, purport to teach them things they already know. Poor means without money, it doesn’t mean without social programs, social workers, research studies and documentaries. Shame on you all who earned a wage that day. Those people inconvenienced themselves for you, people who *always* have too much month left at the end of their check. You should have given them an envelope containing an honorarium when they were done. The 2 documentaries by the BBC “The Scheme” & “The Estate” didn’t pay the participants either, but were and continue to be very detrimental to the lives of the participants. I suppose they (the BBC crew) justify that to themselves too.
Matthew Hayes says:
Jul 6, 2012
Having been trained in anthropology, a discipline with a long history of struggling with just these issues, there is one thing that stands out to me. First is the notion that paying a subject will produce a “performance”, rather than something “authentic”. This idea is nonsense, and always has been. Even from the beginning of documentary practice, it has always been taken for granted that the people in any documentary film were “performing”. They may not been straight up acting, but they are putting on a performance of a version of their selves, which is inevitably different – but not necessarily less authentic – than the performance of their selves they would put on for friends at home. In the words of Tom Waugh, documentary subjects “act to play themselves”. This is the same justification journalists often use, so they do not have to pay the people they interview. That if they pay them, the subjects may not give them the “truth”. This whole notion of not paying subjects, often on principle, is based on misunderstandings of what documentary is, and what the subjects of documentaries are actually doing when they participate. There is not necessarily any authentic way for someone to act in front of a camera, paid or otherwise. It’s just a different version of themselves (most likely) than would be experienced elsewhere. And the idea of gaining objective Truth because the subject is not paid (read: if you pay them, they’ll probably lie), is based on an outdated notion of objective truth presenting itself independently of the participation of the filmmaker and filmmaking crew. Truths are constructed, not discovered, and only come about because of the participation of filmmaker and subject. And this participation most often should warrant compensation in some way, as the subject is just as important as the filmmaker in documentary. Compensation doesn’t have to be money. If anything, subjects should be asked what they would want to receive for compensation. Give them the choice, as they’ll probably surprise you.
vanessa dylyn says:
Jul 8, 2012
As a producer, I have always left some money in the budget to compensate low-income people who agree to tell us their stories. It’s usually not up front, (to avoid compromising journalistic policy) but often after the fact. And often, I’ve done it indirectly, through an organization that will give them the funds, or for visual materials they have offered. Regardless, the amount of money offered was enough to soothe my conscience. Every case is different and we all sense when it’s appropriate to offer compensation and in what manner.
Regardless of whether my film makes money, I and the crew are being paid to work on the film. And I feel strongly that it’s immoral to feature an unfortunate people in a film and not make their life a little more comfortable.