the long awaited first post: week of feb 25th

the idea of authorship is a very interesting one that came up for me when considering our guest speaker, ms. thauberger's, work.  when you're dealing with someone who enjoys working with others when creating work, who really is the author?  it was hard for me to decide who really were the authors of "her" work.  she naturally is the one who gets credit for the work even though when you think about it, what work did she really do?  she placed an ad and got some women to sing for her.  they were the ones singing and writing the material, she had the camera and the idea i suppose, even though having some people sing in front of a stationary camera in nature really isn't that grand of an idea in itself.

in her works with women singing i'd definitely say the authors were the women.  it's clear that thauberger doesn't necessarily think that, at least, she never really mentioned it.  the interesting thing was that she finally mentioned everyone else's efforts when it came time to point out her work's flaws.  she said that if her films seemed "funny" it was because she was not the cinematographer for her films and that she left the writing and singing up to the women, which is a lame and insulting thing to do in my opinion.  that is where i found the question carl brought out in his post to be interesting, "do they sacrifice control?"  i never considered that thauberger possibly purposely didn't want to have any control over the piece, but i think if she is going to claim herself as the author of her work then she needs to use the control she does have as an author and decide whether something is good enough or not in her eyes.  if the point in these films was to show how women can look humorous while sincerely singing then yes... sacrificing control is perfect for this work.  let the women run free and do whatever they want and look silly on camera, but when the point of these films is to create something beautiful and/or dramatic then she really needs to step in and make sure that that is what is coming off to the viewer, even if it means stepping in and bringing up some constructive criticism to the girls she's working with.   

there are plenty of director's out there that work on music videos for bands, so technically all of their works are collaborative with the bands, but you can clearly see where their work is.  look at spike jonze working with the beastie boys on "sabotage."  one of the most successful music videos ever made and you can clearly see his involvement in the work.  he didn't just say.. "hey guys.. i want you to do 95% of the work and then if the work is unsuccessful i'll use the fact that i was working with unexperienced actors and a weak film crew as an excuse for it being unsuccessful."  i'm sure he's worked with plenty of different people that were terrible actors and that weren't doing what he was envisioning necessarily, but i'm sure he stepped in and made it known because he knows that is his responsibility as the author of his work.  but who knows?  maybe he has been lucky in his career and has been blessed with wonderful actors and crew and has to do nothing.  i doubt it though.

what it comes down to is even though the women and camera crew clearly did most of the work on these films and should be considered the authors, she yes, is the actual author of them.  however, she did a terrible job at handling the responsibility and authority that comes into play as being the author.