It’s Groundhog Day again – This is my sixth entry in this blog and for the fifth time I’m going to tell you that there will be a change in the trajectory of my project. More precisely I will merge my previous ideas into one.
For this blog entry I will first recap the talk with Daniel Bauer before carrying out his advice and laying out all the topic areas.
At first we talked about my motivations in general which are nature photography and -filmmaking. We furthermore talked about SeenBlue. We went over the problems we have at Seenblue which are first and foremost gaining reach. He said that this should or could probably be my project. Finding ways to distribute our films in a way that the public actually sees them. Since our projects are important for the survival of our natural environments in and beyond the Anthropocene. From there I told him about my original ideas for my thesis which are sustainable production workflows for conservation films or a filmmaking guide for biologists to empower them to make their own films. Regarding the first one he mentioned that he can’t really see a full thesis project in it. If I wanted to write about it I had to challenge previously established guidelines and analyze them which deviates far from the guide idea. For the second one he said my thesis should be written by me for me, so the outcome benefits me instead of others and that my idea is nice but to altruistic. We furthermore talked about what I actually want. The synthesis of this was: I want to make successful conservation films. So why am I not writing about exactly that? He said that this thesis already kinda exists should not hinder me to write about the same topic since my approach would probably stray far enough from Sabine Probst’s Thesis. I should lay out a map of all the topics I want to write about and see how similar the areas are. Furthermore I should extract all the important parts research them lay out my views and challenge them. So this is what I will do in this entry. Or at least the laying out part for now:
The Importance of Conservation in the Anthropocene:
The first thing that springs to mind is the importance of our environment and the challenges that it faces in the Anthropocene. The topic has more momentum than ever, especially when looking at the SDGs from the 2030 Agenda or the most recent update to The Limits to Growth report from the Club of Rome. Our planet is on the verge of a biodiversity crash, probably resulting in the greatest loss of species ever in Earth’s history. This is especially frightening when we look at the estimates of other mass extinction events like the Permian-Triassic Extinction, where an estimated 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and an estimated 81% of all marine species died out.
The Impact Crisis:
First of all, conservation films and nature documentaries struggle to create an actual impact. Secondly, if they create an impact, it is extremely hard to measure the exact impact they had. From my personal point of view, I see two specific problems related to two strategies when it comes to storytelling. Either the tone of the documentary is moderate to dark, but in the end, there is the silver lining that if we just start to act NOW, it is still possible to turn things around. This way of storytelling is used quite often by the BBC, especially Our Planet I and Our Planet II, as well as in A Perfect Planet among others. Here, people or politics tend to “procrastinate” since there is still time to turn things around. Or the tone of the documentary is dark throughout. Everything is basically lost already, and we can just hope to postpone or mitigate future catastrophes. With this method of telling a story, usually the state of cognitive dissonance kicks in and the viewer closes off emotionally since the truth is too hard to accept. In the thesis, I want to include perceptual phenomena and sociology to analyze why documentaries fail or succeed in creating an impact. There has to be a way to make impactful documentaries or conservation films. I will have a deeper look into why, for example, Blackfish was such an impactful documentary. A hypothesis of mine is that a conservation film needs to establish an emotional bond with the recipient. And that this has to happen not through the subject only but through a human protagonist; a researcher, a biologist, or a scientist. Their personal motivation needs to pass over to the recipient to create a sense of urgency, a sense of “I have to do something”. This is also the reason why I will include a lot of personal motivation of my protagonist in my film. I think this becomes especially important when the subject matter is not really capable of creating a bond. For example, it is easy to care for a cute panda but hard to care for a harsh ice desert.
Ethical Aspects of Conservation Filmmaking:
Basically, everything boils down to this. A documentary is a documentary; it should document reality, show things as they are. Everything added or changed is manipulation. If we follow that path, we basically shouldn’t heavily edit, grade, or support the film with music, since all those things have the potential to manipulate the viewer. However, I think this is debatable and could be an interesting chapter for my master thesis. Because if I, as the filmmaker, am in the Arctic overlooking the ice-covered ocean, the Arctic winds in my face, I can do whatever I want with the material I filmed; it will never convey the emotion I felt when filming it, no matter how I manipulate the colors or add sounds that convey isolation, it will never be the same. So every creative choice of the filmmaker that deviates from the exact reality they witnessed should support the goal of trying to evoke the same emotion. I personally think that this is what a documentary should do, and that’s why I think techniques used in contemporary film can and should be included in our documentary film. I will try to find evidence to support this and also challenge this view.
The Responsibility of a Filmmaker:
This ties in with the impact crisis and the ethical impacts of conservation filmmaking. The goal is, of course, to create an impact but not at all costs. For example, anthropomorphizing an animal may help to create an emotional connection between the subject of the film and the recipient but ultimately it conveys the wrong message. Animals are not humans and even describing their actions with our words and language doesn’t do them justice. I found an interesting thesis on the topic which I will explore further. When it comes to the ethical aspects of conservation film, the filmmaker must be aware of the potential impact and therefore benefit for the environment the film has and the potential threat the film can impose. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we cannot observe anything without changing it or as Michael Crichton so elegantly put it, “Discovery is always rape of the natural world, always.” There will always be evidence of the discovery or in this case the filmmaking. In the end, the only question is if that evidence only tracks in the snow or a destroyed habitat. Filmmakers must be aware of the choices they are making. It is always a question of the greater good, and I will try to find a solution for this. This is probably the best way to tackle the responsibility or sustainability question in this thesis without meddling with guides and analyzing if the proposed method of carbon dioxide reduction on set really makes sense even though this is nonetheless an interesting topic, just not for me, not at this time.
How to Actually Make an Impact:
This aspect is probably the most important of them all to creating an impactful conservation film and the one I am least looking forward to researching or writing about. Even if you create the best film ever, if nobody sees it, it has basically been for nothing. But how to set up distribution in a way that actually works? Social Media? Probably. It is important but I hate to work with it. Ever since I worked as a Social Media Manager for half a year and I know what Social Media actually is and what needs to be done that the algorithm likes you, I hate it. Nevertheless, it is important. But it is not the sole thing that can be done. Of course, film festivals are a way. But it is kinda the same problem the scientific community has. Where they tailor and distribute everything to other scientists, filmmakers tend to do the same but for other filmmakers. This cycle needs to be broken. Information must be somehow presented to and tailored to the general public or politics, to someone who can actually change the world. I know that this is basically the holy grail of conservation film, and I don’t expect to find the perfect answer, but I will try to find it.
Science Communication:
I scratched the surface of this in the previous part; Science and Biology are part of this have the problem that it doesn’t want and doesn’t know how to tailor their messages to the general public. Film could prove a valuable tool here. Biologists could empower themselves to create impactful messages. To actually distribute their findings not only to other biologists but to the general public. Biologists could aspire to become rockstars just as mathematicians did when chaos theory emerged. So the thesis could also address biologists to create and film. I am not quite sure yet how and if to incorporate this but I got a contact from the Karl Franzens Universität that tries to do exactly this – Convince scientists to distribute their findings in an “entertaining” or impactful way. And maybe the next blog entry or probably the one after the next will be about my talk with Dr. Helmut Jungwirth.
Anyway, this is everything, or at least everything I can think of at the moment that I find interesting and am motivated to research about. Everything kinda ties into the general goal to create a guide on how to actually create an impact with conservation film. And now that I have written down everything, I am also convinced that this strays far enough from Sabine Probst’s Thesis even though we’ll probably share a similar title.
