You’re in a remote Russia village. Your camera fingers are starting to freeze. Your interpretator has an American accent, but he’s Russian. The English reporter asking the questions and scribbling away for his text-based article, but there’s not much time to spare.
The interview fixer, who sweet-talks village subjects, is now also acting as an interpretator having wrapped up her duties for the moment. She may think she’s helping, but she’s another voice on the soundtrack, in addition to the subject who the viewer’s supposed to be hearing.
Your plan to get a nice pause after the non-English village resident stops speaking and before the interpretator says their translation is frankly up the spout (ie not proceeding positively). What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?
Well, in this case, just think ‘Leave it until the edit’. Get the shots, get the quotes, get out and bring ‘em back alive. And here’s the edit: www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/feb/11/women.of.slyozi I went to Pskov for the Guardian with Russia print correspondent Luke Harding to investigate dying rural Russian life. It became a lesson about subtitles.
We had an original plan to stop briefly when the subject had said something, so I could record only her voice and subtitle her nicely below. But when you had literally grabbed a granny in the snow, they’re not particularly up for hanging around when they’ve got a pot of brew on the hearth inside. So we had a few minutes with some women outside their houses, but it was rushed and there was no time for these sought-after pauses. The questions were fast and the answers, after the words came out, quickly led onto the next question (or a clarification from our Russia fixer and/or interpretator).
In the edit, I was putting down the subtitles as the person said them. Someone says something, you see subtitles as they say it. Fine, you might expect. No one in the office commented otherwise and the foreign desk bubbled that the film was fantastic. But away from journalism, my family and in particular my mother - we’ll call her J.R. - complained that some of the subtitles were on screen and off again before she had read them. Even with her glasses on. I had edited around the subject’s sentences pretty quickly to avoid the interpretator’s words (he was usually still saying the subject’s preceding sentence, which is fair enough, being interpretator isn’t a breeze).
So for multiple viewer comprehension, should I have kept the subtitles on screen longer and extended the editing cut? This would mean the viewer could read them entirely without question and they’d understand what is being said. However, this would mean 1) the viewer may hear the interpretator blathering on again, relaying a sentence we saw on subtitles ten seconds ago, or 2) the subject may start talking again so we would have subtitles over the subject’s next sentence - NOT the original sentence being subtitled. Agh! So then - would the viewer feel they want to hear that next sentence? ‘Why is the subject’s next sentence after the original sentence not subtitled?’ …Then the issue of selection of quotes becomes very apparent and further questions are raised about constructing a story (that’s another post).
An editor friend of mine, Jake Finbow, thought confusion arose because sometimes as you can clearly hear the interpretator saying what was being shown on screen, albeit a few seconds later. Jake thought I should have dropped the subtitles for the moments when our American/Russia interpretator friend said them on camera. But that would mean hanging onscreen for our American to finish speaking. Tricky if you’re trying to achieve some sort of timing for poignancy or drama in the dialogue or shots.
Top Guardian photographer/videographer Dan Chung, currently filming the troubles in China, gets the interpretator to wait until after the subject finishes, as he did in this video (www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/mar/13/wutai.shan).
Having no one actually speak over what the subject is saying makes for a more observational experience, more intimate and the viewer may consequently feel closer to the subject. However, there is something, strangely honest about seeing and hearing the interpretator on film, ie, that it shows exactly the way it was filmed with the reporter, interpretator, fixer. It presents an air of deconstruction to the video/filmmaking process and that interpretators are a vital element to journalism in foreign climates. (Luke does speak conversational Russian, but he correctly wanted no mistakes in the translations. Give him a break, he’s only been in the country six months.)
As a footnote, it amazes me that British documentary maker Kim Longinotto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Longinotto), whose films are usually non-English with subtitles, asks her collaborator (often a native speaker of where she films) to tap her on the shoulder as a signal to start and stop filming. Now that’s trust. Here’s one of her films, Divorce Iranian Style (www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/divorce_iranian_style.html).
But Longinotto spends months with her collaborator, gaining Visas, discussing the film, so they’re on the same wavelength and know what each other wants from the film and their working methods. (Many times in video journalism you meet the interpretator an hour, if you’re lucky, before shooting.) So their communication is silent, or at least Longinotto is briefed as to what is happening by quiet whispers between moments the collaborator regards as not worth filming. Then subtitles can be dropped on the edit without English-speaking voices being heard. Longinotto doesn’t keep subtitles much longer on the screen than after someone has said them, either.
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