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Ross McElwee and his father (Dr. Ross McElwee)
during the shooting of
Backyard
(1984).
their viewers on these people not as backdrops for the fictional adventures of Western swashbucklers, but as individuals with concerns, ideas, and accomplishments worthy of our sustained attention.
Reggio and Watkins differ radically in their understanding of the "correct" production process for such work, and in their assumptions about how their finished films should engage viewers. Reggio functions in the main like a conventional, commercial director: he raises adequate capital to finance his films, then travels to locations with his crew to record the societies that interest him. The individual films are cut so as to fit comfortably into the commercial exhibition system (indeed, he has received distribution assistance from industry luminaries Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas). Reggio does not assume that viewing his films will initiate change in any direct fashion, but assumes that the images he presents and the implicit ideology of this imagery will affect at least some viewers' assumptions about the societies depicted. Watkins's central concern in making
The Journey
was to demonstrate an alternative to current media practice. The film was shot by local crews assembled in locations around the world, with financing raised locally by production groups. And Watkins's hopea hope that, thus far, has not come to fruitionmwas that the unusual nature of his film might instigate an international, activist network of those who had produced
The Jour
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