TRYING NOT TO CRY
Jeremy Bowen explains the conflicting emotions of film crews in a war zone
Sarajevo A FEW WEEKS ago I drove, as fast as I could, from the main hospital in Sarajevo to the office the BBC has set up in the garages of the UN headquarters. The funeral of two children who had been mur- dered by a sniper had just been shelled. In my bag I had videotapes which contained pictures of the mother and grandmother preparing to go to the funeral, close-ups of the fear on their faces when the explosions started, shots from two different cameras of children running away in panic and of the grandmother falling to the ground wounded. I knew it would make a powerful piece of television. Even better was the fact that the satellite which would transmit the pictures to London was not booked for another couple of hours, so we would have time to do a good job.
But although I was pleased that we had strong pictures to illustrate a strong story, I was also disgusted by what I had just seen. Blood from the grandmother's wound had splattered on to my trousers. The poor woman had a hole the size of a grapefruit in her arm. It had swallowed a large army field-dressing which a colleague from Reuters had put into it. There was a big dark patch of blood on the back seat of the car where she had lain when we had taken her to hospital. Journalists usually have to chase a story to catch up with what has happened. It is rare for it to happen with such force in front of your eyes, when your cameras are running. When it does, you have to disentangle the revulsion or the Pity you feel as a human being from the things you have to do to tell the story effectively on television.
When I reached the cutting-room and started to go through the rushes with the picture editor, I had to separate my profes- sional satisfaction with the quality of the pictures from the sympathy I had for the people who appeared in them. I have been moved to tears many times by the appalling suffering which we have filmed M Sarajevo and in plenty of other places. It is always the same when innocent people are dying. Emotion isn't much use, though, when you have to produce a piece of tele- vision. So you take a deep breath and put the story together in the most accurate way possible. If the event you are reporting is horrific, then cold-bloodedly you have to use the pictures to demonstrate that. No great mystery is involved. When the mat- erial is strong, the best way is to edit it chronologically, letting the images and the people speak for themselves.
We filmed a girl of three in a Bosnian town called Gorazde having a major oper- ation to remove shell fragments from her body without the benefit of anaesthetic. No medical supplies are left there because the Serbs have been besieging the town for more than four months. She screamed every time the doctor put the forceps into her wound to pull out another piece of metal. She kept trying to twist away from the pain, off the operating table. A nurse held her down. The editor of this maga- zine asked me whether strong images like that exaggerate what is happening in Bosnia. They don't. On the contrary, I think they help people understand what it is like to be an innocent caught up in a vicious war in a way that no other medium can.
Accumulating the pictures, of course, can be a painful process. You have to witness the worst moments of people's lives. The young Australian cameraman who filmed the little girl's operation in Gorazde went about his business with great efficiency. He made sure that his shots reflected the dreadful scene without looking like a video about surgical techniques in a war zone. He knew that it is no use making the viewers feel sick by filming too many close-ups of the wound. To communicate the full horror of what is happening, it is usually much better to show things like the expression on the girl's face or the hands of the nurse who had to hold her down on the operating table. The cameraman did his job well. He got the shots that we needed and we moved on to the next location because time was tight. He showed no emotion and concen- trated on the next sequence of pictures. Afterwards, though, when we were back in Sarajevo (which seems like a haven of peace after Gorazde), he started breaking down as he described the scene in the hos- pital to someone who hadn't been there. I hope he doesn't mind me saying that. War reporting, on the surface anyway, tends to be a macho affair. I usually find some urgent business in the next room if my tear ducts start threatening to misbe- have. I have often feared and loathed what
'I'll just wave my magic wand.'
was happening at the same moment as doing everything I could to make sure we were in the best position to film it. A stan- dard job in any war is a trip to the hospital. Doctors are usually keen to pull the blan- kets off the patients so that we can have a good look. It is not for the squeamish and — if it is not shot skilfully — it is a waste of time. The BBC does not like a lot of blood on its screens. It has much more respect for its viewers' sensibilities than other European or American networks. Once in America I saw a shot of a man murdered by drug barons being thrown into a coffin. It was not just in close-up. There was also a gap in the commentary so the viewers would not be distracted when they heard the soggy thud of the corpse landing in the box.
That was entirely gratuitous. There are times, though, when television should let the viewers have it. That is what the reporters in Bosnia are doing. The war in Bosnia is so foul that to understand it you have to be shocked. We would be misrep- resenting the suffering of the people, sell- ing them short, if we communicated anything less. It is probably not enough. The most depressing thing is that we will all have plenty of chances to pass on more of the horror to our viewers, because this war will not end quickly.
Jeremy Bowen is a foreign affairs correspon- dent for BBC TV.
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