Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/12

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Subject: Re[2]: [Leica] Still and motion pictures
From: Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:53:49 -0500

     
     Jeff,
     
     Thanks for your comments.  I don't think I "underestimate the extent 
     to which moving pictures...can be...manipulated."  Rather that is why 
     I wrote merely that motion pictures "MAY facilitate a deeper, fuller, 
     or more accurately understood reportage" (emphasis added).  And I 
     disagree with Mr. Callenbach's proposal for "dispensing with the whole 
     quaint notion of 'Journalistic Objectivity' and replacing it with one 
     in which journalists make their biases known."  All human endeavors 
     are imperfect, of course, but I believe it is the job of journalists 
     to strive for objectivity, no matter how imperfectly they achieve it.
     
     Art Peterson
     Alexandria, VA
     

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: [Leica] Still and motion pictures
Author:  leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us at Internet
Date:    12/11/98 9:52 AM


     
- -----Original Message-----
From: Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil <Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil> 
>     A still photo therefore
>     may lend itself more easily to an artist's use of a situation to make 
>     a statement of his or her choosing, whereas a motion picture (apart
>     from an artificial creation, like a commercial movie) may facilitate a 
>     deeper, fuller, or more accurately understood reportage of an event.
     
     
Art, I think you may underestimate the extent to which moving pictures, 
including those seen in television news, can be (and are) manipulated for 
greatest entertainment value and visual interest! I should know--I was part 
of that for years. Drama is heightened by zooming in or out, by camera 
motion, and by editing technique. The writer Ernest Callenbach, for one, has 
proposed dispensing with the whole quaint notion of "Journalistic 
Objectivity" and replacing it with one in which journalists make their 
biases known, then have at it, allowing their audience to form their own 
conclusions.
     
My own favorite sources of info are international radio. That, and the 
Sunday New York Times. London's Times seems to have grown lighter and 
fluffier in recent years-a real shame.
     
Jeff Segawa
See my photography online at
http://www.netone.com/~segawa