The Police Tapes

Last updated
The Police Tapes
Created byAlan and Susan Raymond
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
Production
Running time90 min.
Production companyVideo Verité
Original release
Network WNET
Release1977 (1977)

The Police Tapes is a 1977 documentary about a New York City police precinct in the South Bronx. [1] The original ran ninety minutes and was produced for public television; a one-hour version later aired on ABC. [2]

Contents

Production

Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, [3] which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time. [4] They produced about 40 hours of videotape that they edited into a 90-minute documentary. [5]

The result was what New York Times TV critic John J. O'Connor called a "startlingly graphic and convincing survey of urban crime, violence, brutality and cynical despair". [5] Cases followed include the discovery of a dead body on the street, the rescue of a mother trapped in her apartment by a mentally ill son, an attempt to negotiate with a woman armed with an improvised flail who refuses to stop threatening her neighbor, and the arrest of a 70-year-old woman accused of hitting her daughter in the face with an axe. [5]

There is some introductory narration at the beginning describing the neighborhood at the time the documentary was filmed. Some unifying commentary is also provided by an interview with Bronx Borough Commander Anthony Bouza, who ascribes the crime rate in the 44th Precinct to poverty, describes the hardening effects of urban violence on idealistic police officers, and likens himself to the commander of an occupying army, saying "We are manufacturing criminals... we are manufacturing brutality." [5]

The production was financed by the New York State Council on the Arts and WNET and cost only $2,000, [6] thanks to the use of Portapak [7] tape equipment; it would have cost an estimated $90,000 if film had been used. Special Newvicon tubes in the video cameras allowed them to tape with only streetlights for illumination, making them less conspicuous to subjects who might otherwise have fled from or approached the cameras. [5]

Accolades

It won two Emmy Awards, [8] a Peabody Award, [9] [10] and a DuPont-Columbia University Award for Broadcast Journalism. [11] [12]

Influence and legacy

The Police Tapes was an important source for Fort Apache, The Bronx , a 1981 film with Paul Newman and Ed Asner. [13] It influenced the deliberately ragged visual style of the 1980s television police drama Hill Street Blues , which used handheld cameras to provide a sense of realism and immediacy—particularly during the morning roll call in each episode, which was based on a similar scene in The Police Tapes. [14]

Robert Butler, who directed the first five episodes, urged the camera operators to avoid carefully composed shots and to move their cameras frequently, telling them "If you're having trouble focusing, that's great." [15] This mock-documentary style, in turn, influenced many other television dramas. [14]

Another line of influence runs from The Police Tapes to the Fox Network reality TV series COPS . COPS, like its predecessor, closely follows police officers, suspects, and crime victims with handheld cameras. According to New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell, the style of COPS then became part of the visual language of feature films, so that "the DNA of [the Raymonds'] original has found its way into the film mainstream." [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Documentary film</span> Nonfictional motion picture

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".

<i>Hill Street Blues</i> American police drama television series (1981–1987)

Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the Metropolitan Police Department staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large U.S. city. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms.

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.

John Russell Langley was an American television and film director, writer, and producer who was best known as the creator and executive producer of the television show Cops, which premiered on Fox in March 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert and David Maysles</span> American documentary filmmaker duo

Albert Maysles and his brother David Maysles were an American documentary filmmaking team known for their work in the Direct Cinema style. Their best-known films include Salesman (1969), Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1975).

Cops is an American reality legal television documentary programming series that is currently in its 36th season. It is produced by Langley Productions and premiered on the Fox network on March 11, 1989. The series, known for chronicling the lives of law enforcement officials, follows police officers and sheriff's deputies, sometimes backed up by state police or other state agencies, during patrol, calls for service, and other police activities including prostitution and narcotic stings, and occasionally the serving of search and arrest warrants at criminal residences. Some episodes have also featured federal agencies. The show's formula follows the cinéma vérité convention, which does not consist of any narration, scripted dialogue, incidental music or added sound effects, depending entirely on the commentary of the officers and on the actions of the people with whom they come into contact, giving the audience a fly on the wall point of view. Each episode typically consists of three self-contained segments which often end with one or more arrests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portapak</span> Portable video tape analog recording system introduced in 1967

A Portapak is a battery-powered, self-contained video tape analog recording system. Introduced to the market in 1967, it could be carried and operated by one person.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Shamberg</span> American film producer

Michael Shamberg is an American film producer and former Time–Life correspondent.

Guerrilla television is a term coined in 1971 by Michael Shamberg, one of the founders of the Raindance Foundation; the Raindance Foundation has been one of the counter-culture video collectives that in the 1960s and 1970s extended the role of the underground press to new communication technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean de Segonzac</span> American film director

Jean de Segonzac is an American director, screenwriter and cinematographer who has worked in documentaries and television programs. Most of his work has been in gritty, cinéma vérité-style law enforcement TV dramas.

<i>Fort Apache, The Bronx</i> 1981 film by Daniel Petrie

Fort Apache, The Bronx is a 1981 American crime drama film directed by Daniel Petrie. The film stars Paul Newman as Murphy, a hard-drinking, lonely veteran cop, and Ken Wahl as his young partner, Corelli, both of whom work in a crime-ridden precinct in the Bronx. Although Murphy's life takes a good turn when he falls in love with young nurse Isabella, the arrival of police captain Connolly threatens to tip the neighborhood's delicate balance into anarchy. Danny Aiello, Kathleen Beller and Pam Grier play supporting roles. The film was written by Heywood Gould and produced by Martin Richards and Thomas Fiorello, with David Susskind as executive producer.

<i>I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School</i> 1993 American film

I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School is a 1993 American documentary film about the pupils at Stanton Elementary School, an inner city school in Philadelphia. It was aired on HBO as part of its America Undercover series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Alpert</span> American journalist and documentary filmmaker

Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.

<i>Lord of the Universe</i> 1974 film by Michael Shamberg

Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat at an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome called "Millennium '73". Lord of the Universe was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis who was a spokesperson of the Divine Light Mission at the time. A counterpoint is presented by Davis' Chicago Seven co-defendant Abbie Hoffman, who appears as a commentator. It includes interviews with several individuals, including followers, ex-followers, a mahatma, a born-again Christian, and a follower of Hare Krishna.

<i>Cinema Verite</i> (2011 film) 2011 television film

Cinema Verite is a 2011 HBO drama film directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The film's main ensemble cast starred Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, James Gandolfini and Patrick Fugit. The film follows a fictionalized account of the production of An American Family, a 1973 PBS documentary television series that is said to be one of the earliest examples of the reality television genre. Principal photography was completed in Southern California. The film premiered on April 23, 2011.

Adrian Schoolcraft is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008 to 2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. The tapes were used as evidence of arrest quotas leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrests, and that emphasis on fighting crime sometimes resulted in under-reporting of crimes to artificially deflate CompStat numbers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Rossi</span> American filmmaker

Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, Emmy nominated for directing, writing and producing The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022), Ivory Tower (2014) and Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011).

"Hill Street Station" is the first episode of the first season of the American serial police drama Hill Street Blues. "Hill Street Station" originally aired in the United States on NBC on Thursday January 15, 1981, at 10:00 pm Eastern Time as part of a two-week five-episode limited-run pilot airing on Thursdays and Saturdays. The episode won numerous Primetime Emmy Awards, a Directors Guild of America Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award as well as Emmy Award nominations for film editing, music composition, and art direction. The episode was directed by Robert Butler and written by Michael Kozoll and Steven Bochco.

The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd is a video directed by Arthur Ginsberg and Video Free America involving footage filmed between 1970 and 1975 following the lives and marriage of Carel Rowe and Ferd Eggan. Originally shown as a 3- channel video, 8-monitor installation including live feed of the audience for The Kitchen in New York in 1971, the edited video is now distributed by Video Data Bank and Electronic Arts Intermix. The edited video consists of an hour-long tape selected from over 30 hours of footage that includes both footage of the marriage and subsequent consummation, shot from 1971-1972, and footage of an interview of Carel, Ferd, and Ginsberg produced for WNET's Video and Television Review in 1975. The video is most readily available as a 33:15 segment on a collection of videos and video segments produced by Video Data Bank, Surveying the First Decade: Volume One: Program 3: Approaching Narrative: "There are Problems to be Solved".The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd is often classified as video vérité, somewhere in between cinéma vérité and reality television, though the footage predates An American Family, a documentary series often considered the first example of reality television.

References

  1. WorldCat.org
  2. Boyle, Dierdre. "From Portapak to Camcorder: a Brief History of Guerilla Television." In Miller, Toby (2002). Television. New York: Routledge. pp. 268–281. ISBN   0-415-25502-3.
  3. The New Yorker
  4. THE POLICE TAPES (Alan & Susan Raymond, 1977) on Vimeo
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 O'Connor, John J. (January 2, 1977). "Documentary on Police Strips Away Any Glamour". The New York Times. p. 73.
  6. Alan and Susan Raymond interview (YouTube video)
  7. IFC Center
  8. "CBS-TV Leads the Way in News-Show Emmys". The New York Times. February 12, 1980. pp. C22.
  9. Epstein, Robert (March 12, 1992). "Academy's Latest Film Stir-Fry". Los Angeles Times.
  10. The Peabody Awards
  11. "DuPont Broadcast Prizes". The New York Times. February 16, 1978. pp. C22.
  12. The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards|Columbia Journalism School
  13. O'Connor, John J. (April 12, 1988). "Video Verite Style for Police Story". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-07-04.
  14. 1 2 Hight, Craig; Roscoe, Jane (2001). Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 81–82. ISBN   0-7190-5641-1.
  15. Fetherston, Drew (May 10, 1987). "Last Call for the Cop Show That Broke All the Rules". Newsday. p. 11.
  16. Mitchell, Elvis (June 30, 2002). "The Movies Can Credit A Cop Show". The New York Times. pp. A13.