A Sense of Place

Monday’s Four Corners is testament to the power of the visual image. Much of the shocking detail was already in the public domain, as Vice reports. But as Madeleine White writes in today’s Age, “It took horrific images, beamed directly into our homes, to get the wheels turning.” She quotes human rights lawyer George Newhouse as saying, “We live in denial. The truth is so ugly that we can’t accept it unless confronted with it visually.”

Do try to watch the Four Corners report above. Make sure you note how the report was filmed and how it was put together. Note how interviewees have been positioned (the Rule of Thirds), the choice of interview location and notice where the interviewees are looking when they speak to the camera. Think about the use of music and camera effects to create a sense of place and mood.

This is by no means the end of this story, and it’s likely to be just the beginning; other explosive footage showing abuse of an Indigenous prisoner Ms Dhu has also been shown in court, but is being hidden from the public domain precisely because of the ramifications of its release. This Guardian story describes the reasons why the state coroner refused to allow the footage to be released, “It was impossible, she said, to control the dissemination of the footage once it was released from the court’s control, and impossible to predict the impact that seeing it later could have on Dhu’s family and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.” One chilling sentence is enough to know why: “Who puts handcuffs on a corpse?” is the question asked by a relative of the prisoner. Again, as this story spells out, visceral images create an impact far beyond the written word.

Don’t forget to bring your class interviews, your footage of your favourite place and a piece of music to the next class.

Please remember to do the week one readings before next class. They are in LMS under Readings Online.