Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Video Recording:

Why? How? Will it last? A true record?

Christiane Wandke - Rainer Lindemann
Berlin, Germany

Documents et Témoignages des Arts du Spectacle: Pourquoi et Comment? / Collecting and Recording the Performing Arts: Why and How?

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

20ème Congrès International / 20th International Congress

Antwerp 4-7 September 1994. Acta. Antwerp : 1995, pp. 96-99

Preface

During the course of our thirteen years' experience as theater documentation specialists, we have produced features about theatrical performances and professional actors in addition to performance documentairies and rehearsal cuts for persons coming from the theater and culture sector. A collection of the whole scale of our experiences gained in our practical work and tested procedures has been published by us in book form titled "Stage in Scanning - the audio-visual theater documentation" (Dec. 1993).

The following short depiction of our work only allows for a global presentation of a lasting development in this area. We beg your pardon in this respect.

Audio-visual theater documentation and trends in a communications society

The methodological conception for the use od audio-visual reproduction procedures in the area of theater-science research and in the technical discours are anchored in the development towards a communications society. This communications society will have the same effect on the thought and communication habits of human beings as the usage of steam and electricity had on manual labour in the industrial world.

The invention of film marked the birth of a new medium that has been guiding the flow of communication into unknown spheres. This development found its continuation in television having its' special stigma of currentness. Both media forms, film and, even more so today, television, give for the most part purely the impression of reality. People come together under the pretext of the implicit authenticity condensed by the opaqueness of the media. The complex production structures of film and television have been turning the communication flow into a one-way street. As we know, mass media have few producers, but many viewers. The received message must appear to the viewer as an overriding message.

The moving-in of video camaras and recorders into the living rooms has done little to change the fact: the audio-visual medium is a receptacle of happenings. The possibility of critical dealings with audio-visual raw material, as these have arisen from the cultural-historical perspective in the area of language for thousands of years, remain closed to the individual not only due to costs, but also because of the technical abilities and herewith remain in the exclusive circle of experts.

In this context it is no wonder that the fine arts, which considers itself to be a critical science, views audio-visual medium with somewhat scepticism and remains true to the written word as an easy-to-use tool of communication. A method that is solely oriented to a defining of terms looks at the visualisation of communication inevitably as a danger for its' very own existence. This anxiety is fully justified, because science runs the risk of not being able to make itself generally understandable.

The perception-oriented theory of an audio-visual source of information

The value of audio-visual material as an information source for the sciences and theatrical worl is undeniably large. However, it leads easily to an establishment of certain set patterns of usage that results from the initial stages of AV technology and therefore do not consider many other possibilities today.

The act of establishing a theoretical AV theater documentation attempts to meet the high expectations in respect to the authenticity in the depiction of the optical and acoustical contents of the reproduced theatrical happenings by the use of a procedure catalogue for the production of AV-theater documents in opposition to so-called "entertaining" TV adaptations. Furthermore in support of this, there is the methodological requirement that the camara operation is not allowed to divert the stage happenings and the AV theater documentation is required to do justice to the performance on the whole.

This fact creates the situation that in the unquestioned perception of an AV reproduction the differences between the two - when compared to the original - are hidden. The producers of the material - the person standing behind the camara and the medium in which it was produced - recede into the background.

The operationalisation of perception is to be contrasted with production-oriented theories. Being that it is also self-explanatory that the determination of the existence of a medium is only historically possible - it becomes evident that the operationalisation of an audio-visual source of information must be continually updated. In respect to this, special consideration should be given to the differentiation between the communicative genres of theater, film and television.

The close relationship between the original and the reproduction demands a special methodological approach to the reproduction and the differentiation in the perception of important theatrical productions and film performances thereof. The principle lies in the post-preparation of the AV material, because according to our experience the handling of audio-visual reproduction procedures ends practically and theoretically at the point in which it should actually begin: namely the simple, continual reproduction.

Organisation of the audio-visual material

The technical possibilities of repeated viewing, of slow motion, fast motion and still picture allow themselves to be used as tools for the methodical capturing of the reproduction and its use for the analysis of "how" the scenic performance is implemented in theater.

- The repetition of these pictures draws attention, one after the other, to special aspects of the performance and therefore leads this "simultaneous" event into a "progressive" event. The choice of time units is decisive in this respect. While repeating, for example, entire performance sequences, other incidents and moments come into being - as opposed to pictures of a short cut of the scene event following quickly one after the other.

- The moments of a performance, a scene or an action can be stretched or condensed with slow or fast motion. Fast motion shows the transformation of scenic space composed of the acting of the players as well as the change of stage props and lighting. The transitions, which often occur over a long period of time and therefore get lost in the conscious perception of the viewer, can be studied closely and herewith become clearer.

- Fast motion shows everything at one glance and slow motion concentrates on the details. Depth, fast scene changes, gaits, actions and gestures become noticeable and demand a description just like the facial expression on a photograph.

The above-mentioned procedures leave the material in its' own complexity and time sequence, however they do also create certain difficulties in handling. By a simple putting together of material, montage allows especially for the analysis of certain aspects of a scenic depiction which can be captured in no other form methodically. The inter-mounting of consecutive moments in time and space during one or more performances creates a form that can be experienced analytically. For example, certain conclusions about show characteristics in the performance work of a director, the gestures of an actor in different roles or the different depictions of one role can be presented in a comprehensible fashion.

The production of mounted material requires in addition to the necessary equipement and accessories, such as two video recorders, gear unit and control monitors also on-hands knowledge of editing/ cutting techniques. Not only the handling of the equipement is necessary for this, but also the experience with the aesthetics of the cut in order to achieve a "visible" result. The mounted material is not only the foundation of analysis, but also the result of the analytical work. It does not possess any sort of independence as a "finished" film does, however it can be the perceptible foundation for a later professional discourse.

Nevertheless, structured preparation of AV material is not enough for the archievement of a visual depiction of an object. Moreover, the material has to be fixed the notion of his certain portrayal intention, because it produces in any case a further openness of the senses in relation tot the portrayed object. Consequently, the portray models that we produced are composed of a written description and fixation as well as a prepared edited version of the AV material. The structured combination of written and audio-visual levels with the total portrayal of the model resulted from the technical possibilities in two separate media that continually refer to each other.

Future perspectives

From today's point of view, our project theory of multi-media presentation is more than capable of further development. Due to the individual access to the moving picture made possible by the video recorder nearly 20 years ago and continued by the audio-visual computer, a new scientific way of working and presentation has become possible.

The methodology of the audio-visual theater documentation, which goes way past the simple recording of theater performances and documenting of material, has been confronted until today with two central problems, as follows. First of all, the distribution of audio-visual material and the corresponding text are doomed to failure not only because of the immense publication and distribution effort involved, but also because of the handling problems in the multi-media literature by the viewer.

The usage of multi-media personal computers appears to be able to master these problems. The hook-up of a special accessory device called a frame-grabber-card to a personal computer allows video pictures to be fed directly into the computer and transformed into digital computer graphics. The desired picture can be taken over from the video reproduction at a rate of 25 pictures per second and then implemented into computer programmes for revision purposes, as would be done in a dark room, and finally put into text form.

It is fundamentally possible with this procedure to integrate running pictures and sound into a computer text. Hereby, the first picture of an audio-visual sequence appears as "photograph" in a computer text. Upon command, the sequence can be activated, stopped, repeated, enlarged ets.. Picture and sound can be transferred into their own texts. Extra hardware equipment is not required for recording the sequences - only a software programme is necassary to get started.

CD-ROM's is used for the storage and distribution of such multi-media texts. In this case, text, video images and sound are coded digitally and saved optically, so that the information is not overlaid due to many recordings or longs storage time by the background noise of the analogue coding and magnetic storage. This solves, in addition, the current archive problem of audio-visual material on analogue video cassettes.

Besides these storage and distribution advantages, this media illustrate the necessary possibility of interaction for the methodical organisational forms of the audio-visual theater documentation. The multi-media computer is not only a place for literature, but als for analysis. This working procedure using the video recorder and on the cutting table as described by us can not only be simultated, but also in a more optimal form put into action. In the end, these possibilities exceed the film cut, because the original material from the new organisation remains untouched. Each picture of the sequence can be addressed, i.e. all of the pictures of the raw material have a running number and these sequences can be mounted anew solely by changing the order of the numbers in the montage programme. The handling is hardly any different than the ordening and sorting of some photos on a desk and is consequently very easy to learn.

This discourse work has unlimited possibilities: literature, analysis, critique and synthesis in the presentation can be accomplished in one step. Not only, the volume of communication increases, but also the depth of communication. It is to be feared that the possibility of direct critism - this means the proofing of a statement according to the raw material, could lead this very discourse into a difficult crisis. This implies the permanent proofing of an aspect of the audio-visual reality. It remains to be seen that especially this conflict could, despite everything to the contrary, lead in fact to a reliability of the seen and spoken which is on the one hand concrete, but still not well-appreciated.

20th Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas94/antw_27.html

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