ADVERT I SEMENT FE ATURE . CVP
THE REEL CRISIS
Elisa L. Iannacone talks shooting with the Canon EOS C70 in areas of conflict or humanitarian disaster ELISA L. IANNACONE is a cinematographer who uses image making to reframe critical world issues. Throughout her career, she has worked in more than 30 countries during times of conflict and humanitarian crisis, producing work for outlets such as National Geographic , Newsweek and the BBC. Her DOP work encompasses drama, documentary, broadcast and commercial projects – and she is currently producing a new visual art installation for Nirox Sculpture Park in South Africa, addressing gender-based violence. DRAWING THE LINE Last month, Iannacone brought her field expertise to a hands-on workshop hosted by CVP at Newman House, exploring the moral considerations and impact of capturing footage in challenging environments. “There’s no hard line. Everyone operates in conjunction with their own ethics. Broadcast lines have been drawn as to what you can and cannot broadcast – this means, you can still shoot it, but perhaps you shouldn’t,” she explains. “Ethics should always be discussed, in any location you’re operating in, but especially in areas of conflict. At what point are you capturing to create sympathy, or just for personal gain? There was a very famous journalist who went to a country in Africa, and asked a community outright if there were any women that had been raped. It’s a blinkered assumption that, first of all, they’d understand his English and be able to respond – and then that, just because someone has that story, they would want to speak to him about it.” She continues: “Then, you have Kevin Carter’s photograph of a starving Sudanese boy who had collapsed in the foreground, with a vulture eyeing him from nearby. It won a Pulitzer Prize, but wasn’t received well, and Carter took his own life four months later. He said that, after taking the photo, he chased the vulture
“At what point are you capturing to create sympathy, or just for personal gain?”
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