Introduction
John Grierson, prior to becoming what he is known today as the father of documentary, was a political activist, a social critic, and a person that could easily be swayed to do something when he has seen something done the wrong way.
In defining a documentary as “the creative treatment of reality,” Grierson could as well be his view of film as a form of social and political communication or a mechanism for social reform, education, and even spiritual improvement.
In the context of ‘Not for publication’ (by Chris Masters), this essay shall try to point out how the creative treatment of reality was undergone.
Discussion
Chris Masters as a documentary producer/writer/reporter rolled into several roles depending on what he says as the availability of talent, budget and time, discussed about documenting the drug addiction house in an undisclosed area in one of Australia’s cities.
In documenting such a case, it could be as easy as ABC-get proper permission from whoever runs the place, prepare questionnaire for certain people — from the manager of the house to new customers — and role the film, or start the recording.
But reality is not everything that can be seen, heard and experienced at any given time. It is a mixture of people and their experiences, past, their background, and all the circumstances that have brought them to a certain place at a certain time for a certain experience: this time, at the drug or heroine joint.
So that in order to create reality, Masters has got to dig deeper. This is why in a documentary, Masters enumerated the staff: researchers, reporters, writer, producer, cinematographer, computer graphics artist, and some other more talents that could contribute to bring out the best there could be out of a story or a documentary.
As a researcher, Masters had to know what happened to the 16-year old neophyte shooting heroine in the house. How come? So, he had to learn that she was a secondary school student aiming to go to college, but did not make it on the list, and now feels a failure. She met a boyfriend material who was into the drug use, and since she felt she has nowhere else to go or turn to, despite siblings who made it to college, there she was. She was described as nice and polite although wearing one-size smaller boots or outfit.
Masters went far more ahead to pin a reality by arranging a discussion and a meeting with the school prefect. Maybe, she could be persuaded to do rehabilitation or counselling. He felt for the teenager, and the manager of the shooting gallery felt for the student himself, but there was not much to recover from heroine users as they, as Masters wrote, are often denied what there is for them about life, if there ever really was.
There are a lot of other characters they were able to meet, a transvestite, an Indian, a young man dealer, all in the use. And more younger ones. Prior to the video take, the team already went to do some background check and research on the issue: media hype and exposes, churches’ moves, health prevention and intervention measures such as the single use of syringe which were availed legally as these has been a move by the government to prevent spread of death through the AIDS and other fatal and communicable diseases, among other things.
Heroine or drug use is not just about a shooting gallery where people drop by, rent a room and inject the drug. It is about people, individuals that are not just faces and bodies convened in an area at a time to simply use drugs. These are individuals who, at some point in their lives, were useful, hopeful, individuals who knew what they want out of life. Until they get derailed. The school prefect’s story matched a pathetic march, a silent war where the losers are presented in the documentary.
The point in the documentary is that there is a waste of life going on, and that whoever must need to know and need to act have got to know and need have to act swift. As Grierson earlier pointed out, a documentary is a film that would help propagate change, or improvement in society. But in order to effect change, the intended audience must be grabbed at the collar, the better of which to feel the intensity of what was going on.
Creativity is about life. Life is about struggles and getting over humps. Reality is ugly. But underneath reality, there is a life that is to be discovered. And life is creative.
Conclusion
By going about what had been and what could be, the documentary of Masters about a school prefect and the shooting gallery not only presented a view of what goes on in a drug den, what kind of people can be encountered in such a place, but also how come these things happen, how come these individuals came to being at the gallery at all, and how trivial could be a reason to destroying a life.
From various points of view, from all other groups and peoples involved, the documentary captured: role of the health services sector by providing legal injection paraphernalia, the role of the business of drug dealing, the role of society such as the schools or institutions and their so-called lists and examinations that measure the length of what a student could go, among others.
By showing how to end a creation, that is life, Masters was able to present how the creative treatment of reality was undergone.