25/12/2021
A Film as Research Entity
According to Bill Nicolas (2012), every film is a documentary. He believes that either a film is meant for amusement purposes or otherwise; either it is built on artificial or natural mise-en-scene, it is meant to represent the world we live in. Therefore, every filmmaker is a researcher, otherwise, the representation will possess no audience effects.
This has made a film or movie a strong mass communication tool that serves the roles of a cultural disseminator, educator and informer. Apart from amusement, through movies, we learn & show to others our cultures and learn about theirs via the same medium. Consequently, for a filmmaker to have a positive impact on his/her audience, there must be thorough research.
Subsequently, the audience play major role in this process. The meaning audience/viewers make out of a film comes as a result of the audience effects techniques employed by the filmmaker. This can only hold relevance on the condition that the filmmaker employs the right elements including facts to establish or support the theme as well as other motifs that truly represent the storyline.
Consequently, when a filmmaker fails to represent the world in actuality, he/she has failed.
By: Abdul Rashid Gbambu
