Difference between revisions of "Talk:Newsreel"

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Alethea here! I threw in some of my discoveries and notes '''in bold''' in response to some of the questions posed or noted by Tyler. Maybe it can inspire more thinking along similar lines.
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Galloway's comments for our dossier:
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---
  
Newsreels - Tyler's notes and ideas from group meeting February 22, 2010 - Re-written in no particular order
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Newsreels
  
 
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Good work here in this first dossier. I like how you described the
We should start watching some newsreels...
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newsreel in terms of a remediation of newspapers, particularly the
 
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organization of sections and articles. You described the formal
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1404461171702378984&ei=I4-ES8qNBJ3cqAKQoPhl&q=newsreels&hl=en#docid=7031837427542432187 NEWS ON PARADE 1940 & 1941 FREE LIMTED TIME ONLY NEWS REELS]
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  structure of the newsreel including narrative, etc. (the voice over
 
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  narration creating unity out of disparate film sources), and how it
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1404461171702378984&ei=I4-ES8qNBJ3cqAKQoPhl&q=newsreels&hl=en# NEWS REELS 1944 & 1945 19min FREE LIMITED TIME RARE EXCITING]
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  adopted different contexts and narrative styles from different sources.
- ALLIES LIBERATE FRANCE!
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  The description of the balance between fact and fiction was also
 
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interesting, particularly when you demonstrated that this narrative is
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Gt6hPuMaw Movietone News - 1940s]
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  built into the film through restaging and reenactment. I like how you
 
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  talked about about Crary and Zielinski, and how you talked about film
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2728622923094765925&ei=rYCES4K3IZbqqgLIlfGrBw&q=newsreels&hl=en# 1930 DEPRESSION WILL ROGERS THE NRA PARADE FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT]
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in terms of both dioptric and catoptric phenomena. Good work on film as
 
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  a fusion from discrete to continuous, the image only being an apparent
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-16yMnfrj0U Black Dahlia Newsreel]
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  effect. The section on speed was also nice, how playback influences if
 
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  we think it's real. I also was fascinated by how you discussed the
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5499945496596795717&ei=rYCES4K3IZbqqgLIlfGrBw&q=newsreels&hl=en# Vintage Nazi Propaganda Newsreels - Part One]
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  aspect of time delay and the notion of the "first pictures" as
- Feature length!
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  dramatization of the news. You talked about the war as a four year film
 
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  with hundreds of parts, and that the dramatization united people around
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxTZ446tbzE Tacoma Narrows Newsreel]
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  a discourse of national unity, all of which was helped by the
 
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  perception of realism in the newsreels. I particularly liked how you
[http://retrovision.tv/freevideo/edison-newsreels-san-francisco-earthquake-aftermath-1906/ Edison Newsreels: San Francisco Earthquake aftermath (1906)]
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  talked about the balancing of "fictional facts." For improvement I
 
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  would like to see more of an argument here, more engagement with the
[http://dl.screenaustralia.gov.au/module/181/ Newsreels before sound]
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assigned texts, and more use of the critical techniques. Try to steer
 
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clear of the Wikipedia-style neutral or descriptive language and really
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVuTz2C3pSM Rudolf Heß; Russian Victories; Japans Treachery; etc 1941/12/24]
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  do a close reading of your artifact in which you make a clear argument.
 
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Overall a good first start to the semester.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzZgARbCHRw&feature=related Nazi Germany Invades Russia 1941/6/23]
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[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S85yWNIx-cA&feature=related Barbarossa Jun - Dec1941 (Part 2/5)]
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- Documentary
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[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW9Akjbl2QU&feature=related Operation Barbarossa (German Invasion of Russia)]
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- Battle remediated through video games
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Notes from Class Meeting
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- Newsreels as dramatizations of newspaper news reporting
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- The sensationalist quality of the reporting, which seems to accompany the 'actual' pictures of the news.
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- i.e. "And here are pictures! from the front of the War in Europe!"
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- Although newsreels were made I guess as early as 1929, they seem to have taken mainstream form during World War 2. A lot of battle footage, interestingly...   
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- Questions of "mode of address":  who is this narrator, and who is the audience he is speaking to?  His narration, in a sense, 'creates' a public to hear it.
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- A news 'anchor' is not present visually, just aurally. Seems all the more 'impersonal' because of this, as if representative of an unseen public.
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- We might tie in Benedict Anderson's discourse on Imagined Communities here, i.e. how newspapers created for readers a sense of 'nation.' There seem to be strong parallels here.
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- Were the events portrayed in newsreels actually the events described? '''for the most part from what I've discovered, this seems to be true. However, they wrote the 'script' for the newsreel based on whatever notes they may have gotten from the cameraman. In other words, the collector of the footage was completely disconnected from the people who turned that raw footage into a story.'''
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- If events were not captured, were events re-enacted? '''I found one old newspaper article explaining how they reenacted a flight so that newsreels could record the footage. I also found a number of newspaper articles about a newsreel cameraman being accused of asking a Frenchman to shoot an Algerian so he could have a good story.'''
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- Newsreels seem more like a 'genre' than a 'technology.' They were made on film, and shown before films in theatersIs this true?  Perhaps, how might they be read as either? '''It is true. There was usually a 10 or so minute long newsreel shown before new films. It seems most companies produced newsreels twice a week. One article I found suggests that Universal intended to produce a daily newsreel for sometime, but I haven't found evidence that actually happened. In addition, some theaters were dedicated newsreel theaters that showed about an hour of content that included newsreels from the various newsreel makers along with some cartoons and recordings of musical performances.'''
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- If they can be considered a genre, did they influence other genres or styles of moviemaking? '''I think they most explicitly influenced television news. Although I'm interested in old newspaper articles that suggest that newsreel producers were completely independent of TV newspeople. I found a brief article that suggested some of the differences between TV and film news including more close-ups in the former. Also, film newsreels had to compete with television's faster speed (although I'm not sure why it was so much faster).'''
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- This 'nonfiction' text as implicitly contrasting with the characteristically 'fiction' text of the movie following it '''I'm fascinated by some of what I've read in terms of reception of newsreels. I've found a lot of criticisms trashing newsreels and others praising their quality. I also found one editorial of a guy talking about how much better newsreels used to be 'back then'.'''
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- What was the relation to other shorts shown also before the film, i.e. cartoon shorts?
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- How current was the news? How long would news reels be shown for, i.e. 1-3 weeks, shorter or longer?  An implication seems to be that the news had to be somewhat 'general,' in order to not go out of date too quickly.  Nevertheless, it still 'seemed' immediate on reception '''I found one article suggesting the time lapse between filming footage at the invasion on Normandy and it appearing in theaters was about a week. Although some articles talk about how amazing and speedy newsreels are. Apparently some could be produced within a few hours for delivery to some theaters. I found a really interesting article from 1928 about a plane that was outfitted with everything required for filmmaking. So all the footage could be processed, mixed and edited in the time it took the plane to get from point A to point B. I also found an old article discussing the process of producing newsreels that said five weeks was the average lifespan.'''
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- Questions of alliances between movie studios and news agencies? Was the news exclusive to their distribution partners? '''One description of a newsreel theater seemed to suggest that they compile newsreels from various studios... that's how they fill their hour of programming.'''
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- Newsreels continued to be distributed (apparently) long after TV was widely distributed, far into the 1960's.  Was this a 'theater' experience that people were still interested to witness after TV?
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- How does the era of the news reel compare, socially, with our current era of 24 hour news? '''The newsreel theaters seemed to offer a kind of situation similar to 24 hour news. According to one article, it offered people the opportunity to partake of the amusement of going to the theater without the worry of walking into a narrative mid-story.'''
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- How might questions of audience reception be relevant?
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Other interesting questions that come to my mind (Tyler):
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- Since we so often associate newsreels with war footage, what other subjects did they report on, i.e. before or after WW2?
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- For example, did they report on the economic growth in the US and concurrent suburbanization; The Marshall Plan in Europe? '''There seemed to be discussions of women's topics (apparently some of these were narrated by women), sporting events and stories of oddities like an Italian man that bit a dog.'''
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- It seems the discourse in newsreels implicitly supports a narrative of 'Western progress'.  Is this borne out? '''I think this depends on which country's newsreels you're watching.'''
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- Did other countries produce newsreels, and what were they like?  Were they 'vessels' for propaganda during WW2? '''One of the coolest articles I read was about how America made newsreels in other languages for distribution in other countries right as they were being liberated. They produced films outlining the exiled government's efforts in the war. They also distributed American features.'''
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- Why did news reels 'die'? Did it have more to do with changing social circumstances ("the times they are a-changing" (1963)), or technological changes such as the prevalence of television programming? '''Along with TV news, I also read there was an increased expense of newsreels. Although I don't know what makes newsreel production cost so much more than TV production.'''
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- Was there anything that took their place?
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- Do we see 'echoes' of news reel tone today? Either in news coverage, or in other places?  i.e. Is it seen as constitutive of social norms of its time more generally, as it might influence the Cold War culture following WW2, the particular qualities to culture we associate with the 1950's?
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- Is the footage ever re-used, and how? '''An article, ''news about the newsreel'' discusses that the sounds they used were mixed in later often from very different sources, and sometimes, because of the high cost (at least initially) of lugging around sound equipment, often they would dub dialogue over the footage.'''
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- i.e. Is the news re-used in documentaries, film or television, such as Ken Burns' film "The War" or documentaries on the History Channel? '''for at least a brief time there was a show on TV ''Yesterday's Newsreels'' That was just repurposing newsreels based around a similar theme, in one case telling the story of film star Mary Pickford through various newsreels about her.'''
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- If so, does the textual interpretation change on re-contextualization?  Should we see these documentaries, in a sense, as 'writing history' in a more final way than is said of journalism as 'the first draft of history'? '''I really like this question.'''
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- How were news reels actually shot? Were 'journalists' embedded with soldiers, or did soldiers actually shoot the footage? '''Bureaus would send out cameramen, sometimes on specific assignments. They also had relationships with foreign bureaus. Occasionally amateur cameramen would sell footage to the studios, and if they had something really good the studios would pay a lot to make sure they had the scoop.'''
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- How are news reels different from "stock footage"? Were news reels considered 'public domain,' or were they copyrighted?  Did 'stock footage' enter the public domain? '''Newsreels were definitely owned by the studios who either sold off their collections or donated them when they shut down their newsreel divisions.'''
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- Seems the original video was unnarrated. Was sound recorded during or after when the footage was shot, and what was the process for this?  If unnarrated, did journalists need to interpret what the pictures were about, if they received them by mail? '''Totally unnarrated. All the editors had to inform them of what the footage even was were ''dope sheets'' where the cameraman would type of notes explaining what the footage was and attach it to the film for it to be shipped to the editors (1938).'''
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- What actually were the news sources for newsreels? I.e. was news collected by wire (telegraph), or was it written and transmitted along with the film? '''People may have read it in newspapers and gone to get pictures of it or it was a planned event and they would specifically send cameramen, but all they would do was get footage. It was up to the scriptwriter and the editor to decide what to keep and what to throw and to actually turn it into a story. I find it interesting that it is referred to as a script. Very telling, I think.'''
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- Like film, newsreels seem to be shot on film. So they did not have the status of television or radio, which are 'ephemeral' mediums that must be recorded to be re-shown.  What were the consequences of this? '''They could be used in ''year in review'' programs or compiled and re-aired elsewhere (like on TV). It also means they were able to be doctored... you know... remixing sounds, recutting it in strange ways.'''
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- Were newsreels generally destroyed when they were out of date, or were they archived, like newspapers have been archived? '''It seems newsreels from the axis were often destroyed when they were found by the allied powers.'''
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- How do newsreels change over time, during the 40 years or more that they were distributed?
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- Are their interpretations of historical events different from conceptions we may now hold?
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- We should remember that, during wars, the outcome was uncertain. In this way, newsreels seemed, in a way, to 'remediate' the war, to show it almost as a movie, but a movie with 'real-life' drama!
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- There seem to be discourses of realism that attach to documentaries of WW2.  Rebecca Salaszek, for example, wrote a paper about how the History Channel constructs their documentaries as if the viewer was 'actually there,' 'immersed' in the action.  This seems to be a historical view looking back.  Surely people at the time did not want to be there.  In a sense, film was the perfect medium to 'transport' the viewer to the battlefield.
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- This seems to support the connection to nationalism.  Viewers 'safe' in movie theaters could watch 'our boys' out on the front...
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- If newsreels 'died' in the 1960's, what was their impact on news reporting during the Vietnam War? Reporting during that war was famously varied.  There were many independent journalists, just 'guys with a camera' who were down 'in the shit.'  If this reporting attempted for realism, for example, did it construct this in response to the apparent ideological or even propoganda tone of newsreels?
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- Would be interesting to look at the connection with propaganda.  Were newsreels 'vehicles' for propaganda messages from the US government?  As Americans, we may not 'see' the propaganda in newsreels, if it can be argued to be present.  '''One article I found suggested that the newsreels' focus on WWII before the US joined projected a tone that US involvement in the war was inevitable. Also, it seems there was an official film board overseas and there was a lot of talk about censorship of newsreels for various reasons. Additionally, newsreels were most definitely used for purposes for propaganda in Germany and perhaps other parts of Europe.'''
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- Did the US government encourage certain types of reporting, or restrict others?
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- i.e. Were newsreels very violent, did they show human casualties? '''There was a Gallup Poll asking people whether they would like to see images of casualties during the war. Some argued it was important Americans knew what was going on over there. Others argued it was distressing for people to realize the horrors their friends and brothers were facing. The state of Ohio did censor certain newsreels early in the 1930s because they considered them to be anti-Nazi.'''
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'''Along those lines I think it's interesting to consider how much the film industry censored things. For much of history the only censoring body for television have been the networks themselves seeking not to lose audiences or cause controversy. How much were the studios concerned with public perception? Or was getting the best footage the fastest more important?'''
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Latest revision as of 10:41, 24 November 2010

Galloway's comments for our dossier: ---

Newsreels
Good work here in this first dossier. I like how you described the
newsreel in terms of a remediation of newspapers, particularly the
organization of sections and articles. You described the formal
structure of the newsreel including narrative, etc. (the voice over
narration creating unity out of disparate film sources), and how it
adopted different contexts and narrative styles from different sources.
The description of the balance between fact and fiction was also
interesting, particularly when you demonstrated that this narrative is
built into the film through restaging and reenactment. I like how you
talked about about Crary and Zielinski, and how you talked about film
in terms of both dioptric and catoptric phenomena. Good work on film as
a fusion from discrete to continuous, the image only being an apparent
effect. The section on speed was also nice, how playback influences if
we think it's real. I also was fascinated by how you discussed the
aspect of time delay and the notion of the "first pictures" as
dramatization of the news. You talked about the war as a four year film
with hundreds of parts, and that the dramatization united people around
a discourse of national unity, all of which was helped by the
perception of realism in the newsreels. I particularly liked how you
talked about the balancing of "fictional facts." For improvement I
would like to see more of an argument here, more engagement with the
assigned texts, and more use of the critical techniques. Try to steer
clear of the Wikipedia-style neutral or descriptive language and really
do a close reading of your artifact in which you make a clear argument.
Overall a good first start to the semester.