Issue7限时[Flamy July]小组作业，请拍

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TOPIC: ISSUE7 - "The video camera provides such an accurate and convincing record of contemporary life that it has become a more important form of documentation than written records."
WORDS: 514          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2006-7-21

Can video camera become a more important form of documentation than written records? In my point of view, while video camera becomes more and more popular all over the world in recording daily life, it merely becomes a powerful alternative documentation method but at most a complementary documentation to written records.

Admittedly, for its precise documentation and vivid pictures, video documentation plays a vital role in recording contemporary world. Undoubtedly, pictures are more welcomed and easily to accepted by normal people than written words. Furthermore, a picture usually bears more information than relevant written record does. For instance, pictures of a celebration is more effective and efficient than relevant written records in telling people the process of the ceremony, participates, size, effect and so forth. Think how could only a short news report make such vivid and real description about it? Therefore, with many other applications, video documentation does become an important measure of recording.

However, the speaker overemphasizes the function of video documentation, overlooking many drawbacks of video camera. First, the use of camera is limited by many facts, such as the situation, battery, machine condition and so forth. As we all known, the using of camera is banned in some formal places such as the museum where there is a painting show. Also, the battery camera used may use up and the machine just can not continue to work. What is more, a proper camera in good state is the premise of video documentation. In short, assuming any of the above happens, the documentation method would fail.

To the contrary, written documentation will not suffer those concerns with much broader applications. Take some international meeting for example. The information people talk about is the point other than the condition and the scenes of the meeting place. In this case, video can do little help in recording precisely this meeting while written documentation can make it. In written form, sophisticated perspectives can be correctly recorded and the details of the discussion during the meeting also can be reserved for future use. Moreover, take the big event with in-depth causes and impacts for another example. Understandably, only written documentation can faithfully record what has happened and the reason of the event, the end result and the insightful impact which are all can not be well described by several simple pictures by a video camera. Therefore, written records is the most important form of documentation both in the time being and in the future, let along in a great more situations where the written documentation is more appropriate to apply, with the video records only as supplement.

In sum, there are still several other aspects relevant to the issue under discussion, which, unfortunately, I have no sufficient time to explore in detail. Yet, the above-discussed content to a large extent have already justified my claim that though video camera has become more and more important, it at most is complementary to the written records. In the final analysis, we should depend on the subject we need to record case by case to decide which means of documentation should be adopted in order to record most effectively and efficiently.