In fact, the headline you have in front of you right now should cause, if not shock, then bewilderment, at the very least: can a reportage be staged?! A priori, no! It cannot! Because the reportage Reportage is the author’s total non-interference in the processes of life, in the event. As E. S. Medynsky wrote, the essence of filming by this method: came-see-displayed. Without interfering! Only capturing on film what is happening in real life. But it’s not for nothing that wise people said, “Never say ‘never'”! Staged reportage in the modern practice exists in two forms: a) staged event and b) simulated event.
a) Staged event
One of the first to break the taboo on staged events was the king (!) of reportage, R. L. Carmen in his film “The Tale of the Caspian Oil Workers”. He decided to restore the past, to show how the history of oil production from the bottom of the Caspian began.
“A lot of preparatory work was done. We searched for a list of those who landed on this island for the first time – they had already dispersed to different fields. We gathered all these people and asked them at length about how they were dressed, what the water barrels looked like, the tug barge, what day they disembarked, what the weather was like, etc. And so the same tugboat went in to disembark as two years ago, commanded by the same captain… The men were so emotionally charged, as if they were transported back to the day when they first
they landed on the ridge for the first time. We were shooting an almost pure report: people jumped into the icy water, which was up to their waists, passed barrels of water to each other – it was the same as two years ago. Then people made a fire and dried their clothes, took off their rubber boots and poured water out of them. Everything was utterly vital, natural, true… So what was this, organized filming? Yes, organized. Reportage? Yes, reportage. THE FINE REVENTION of the past forced people to relive the past, as if they had been forced to relive it. But if they were forced to play, told to smile, be alert, jump in – it wouldn’t be the same…
So, organization is compatible with reporting. But some directors and cameramen “organize” everything to such an extent that they leave no room for a live touch. One has to be able to rely in some way on the course of events that will bring an unexpected, exciting touch and give a freshness and spontaneity to everything that has been planned in advance” [28, p. 22, 24].
Contemporary documentary filmmakers began to make extensive use of this technique, “shooting for the chronicle, for the document. Aiming for one thing: to make it as similar to what it was in life as possible. And, having said “a”, did not stop there. First they organized the event and filmed it with real people, participants in bygone events, as R. Carmen did. He strove to be as honest as possible. Less scrupulous authors began to reconstruct not only the event itself, but instead of real people they began to shoot actors who played the ROLE of these real people who were participants in the events. Let’s move on. S. M. Eisenstein filmed the storming of the Winter Palace by sailors in “October” (which did not happen in reality). These films are kept in many countries’ film libraries as DOCUMENTAL FEATURES of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. This, I beg your pardon, is entirely arbitrary: there was no such event: the storming of the Winter Palace by sailors, this is all in the director’s imagination. That’s how he wanted to show the beginning of the revolution in the country.
If such great masters take such liberties with historical facts, then who said: what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to bull? The combination of documentary and staged footage is a common practice in today’s video reports.
When shooting documentary material, the director of photography (the author, director or the cameraman himself) dictates to the participants: walk, sit, work, look in the frame, smile, do… and the real person plays himself. When recreating the past, they do not hesitate to introduce the actor, and in criminal chronicles this technique has become commonplace. Everything is mixed up… In the meantime, reportage continues to be considered the most honest and trustworthy method, and reportage is the most honest genre of journalism because the viewer believes it. In order to be honest with the audience, the authors still need to report that the episodes are reconstructed. If you need fragmentary shots of the reconstruction, the shooting – in any case do not shoot close-ups of the actors, only the general background, or details, shadows, silhouettes – in this case, the individual staged shots will not violate the overall style of the reportage.
b) Staged event
Reporting and organized storytelling can take another form: the journalist can simulate an event. This is where the “provoked situation” method of filming comes into play. The basis for a reportage (most often a problem reportage) is an invented and played out situation, and then the hidden camera watches people’s reactions to this situation. From the very beginning, the reporter brings the viewer up to speed on the situation and warns them of what is about to happen right before their eyes, i.e. the viewer becomes a witness to the upcoming event.
So, we see a construction site, a truck pulls up, a man gets out of the cab, addresses the workers with a demand, and they begin to load bricks. A foreman or foreman walks up to them, “What are you doing?” “Don’t you see, we’re loading bricks, the bosses told us to!” The answer quite satisfies the questioner. The report was a staged performance, with a hidden camera on the bus. A specially organized situation focuses the audience’s attention on a particular event, behind which we can see a socially significant problem. It needs to be solved, and the audience can see it openly. The relevance and topicality of this problem is the guarantee of the audience’s interest in this problematic journalistic narrative.