Jean Rouch and David MacDougall Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Jean Rouch and David MacDougall - Assignment Example Despite Rouch and MacDougall being both proficient filmmakers, whose work is highly valued in the cinema industry, their styles in making the film are divergent and variant. Firstly, Rouch employee’s a filmmaking style known as, ethnic-fiction, in making his films. Rouch style of filmmaking was influenced by the unearthing of surrealism. In these films, there is a thin line between fiction and documentary. In comparison, MacDougall ethnographies were purely documentaries. Secondly, David often used handheld cameras to capture his films while Rouch used light handheld cameras in his direct cinemas. Rouch used Pilot-tone connected to a 16mm camera using a prototype of Nagra III to shoot, Chronicle of a summer, in 1960. This was used in place of the heavy sound recording machinery that was very unreliable. Before the pilot-tone, the documentary sound was recorded before, during interviews or much later on location. The sounds that were recorded were later synchronized during soun d editing hence providing the documentary with sound. In conclusion, it is clear that there different approaches in filmmaking considering Rouch and MacDougall main difference is in the style of making the film. Rouch focuses on fiction films while MacDougall shoot documentaries. It is also clear that the advances in the film industry have been greatly contributed by technology. For example, in this day and age it is possible to shoot videos and record quality sound at the same time. In, as much as, Rouch and MacDougall differ in the choice of cinematic styles, they uphold a number of common aspects. The first one is that both of their cinematic styles incorporated aesthetic art. Aestheticism is an art movement supporting art nature and beauty values more than social-political themes portrayed in a film.