The history of all things relating to this research

Well ... not quite but this is an attempt to summarise this study so far so as to bring you up to date. So much ground has been covered in the time before this blog began. Emergent methodologies are characteristic of this kind of study so it is kind of nice that the initiation of this blog as a research method was born out of the emerging/evolving methodology. Aha ... PROOF ... that my methodology is emergent!

A brief summary of 2009. This year has been the second year of my PhD. After a rocky start last year (2008 ... I'll get to that in a minute) it took me a while to settle in to what I thought I might be doing and to find some belief that I actually could do it. It has been a year of theory. I began the year by finally having my research project approved and I began work on the most important (at that stage) part of the thesis, Chapter Four. It should be noted that there was no plan to produce an artefact at that stage. Most of this year has been spent playing in the sand pit, searching for different models and frameworks that will help me ground and express my ideas on this theory of 'the optimal documentary'.

I began with Vorderer's (2004) Model of Complex Entertainment Experiences which allowed me to show how 'enjoyment' is central to the entertainment experience. Around the same time I came across the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (After asking a colleague how to pronounce his name) I realised that his 'Flow theory' could be integral to what I was trying to say about documentary, I was searching for a 'heart' of documentary at that time but realised that Csikszentmihalyi's theory on the 'optimal experience of life' was transferrable to my research. So I began playing with both Vorderer's and Csikszentmihalyi's models to see how they could fit together, see where they fit within the realm of documentary theory and production.

Before I knew it it was October and I was still running around in circles, seeing how those pieces fit together ... getting increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress ... when a small doco project came up with our Learning & Teaching Unit for me to get involved with for a couple of weeks. So I packed the books away and got into the practical side of things. It was very refreshing to pick up a camera again and craft together a small doco. It got me refocussed on the aesthetics of documentary: composing shots, meeting people and thinking about how best to portray their perspective on the given subject. This is such a different world to that of documentary theory where people like Bill Nichols et al argue for the truth-claims of the genre. When you're doing it, when you're making a fact-based film all that stuff is basic, implicit, not even considered. It is really about crafting the perspectives of the people you're filming and presenting them in the most beautiful way possible. You're thinking about your target audience, giving the people who've commissioned this what they want and meeting the deadlines.

Oh and did I mention that around this same time I completed another circle and decided to implement an artefact into my research. Why? For the above reasons, that an examination of the documentary genre is more than the theory. Documentary is a practical thing, it needs to be practiced in order to find anything new out about it. That of course meant another trip back to the ethics committee ... stay tuned for more on that one in another posting!

Travelling back in time to 2008 ... the first year of this study was difficult. It started well ... I knew exactly what I was doing and got right into writing up the proposal for it. 6 months in I was side-tracked by an enormous community documentary project that sucked up 3 months of my time. Of course, if I had have known back in those beginning times that I was a practitioner-researcher I could have used the community documentary project, learnt from it, grown from it, helped me to shape the early development of my research rather than it being the 'hinderance to my time' that I saw it as.

So 2008 disappeared from under my feet and when my research proposal was rejected I jumped ship and decided to start planning a new project. Now I see that all this was part of the process, I was reading book after book, searching and finding my context, my place to begin my journey. I re-wrote the research proposal late 2008 and finally got started in early 2009 which is where our story began.

Looking and reflecting on my study to date is very interesting. Now that I have a clear understanding of just how circular this kind of research can be it feels like it was all meant to be this way, I wouldn't have got to the point I am right now without the last 2 years of adventure. So, this is why PhDs take so long. It's the journey that has to unfold over time. If you've travelled nowhere during the course of your study then I guess you've really travelled nowhere in the solving of a problem, creation of new knowledge and/or learning how to be a researcher.

Parallel worlds

Still working on that methodology chapter ...

It's nice the way the world of 'naturalistic inquiry' fits perfectly with a style of contemporary documentary production, namely that 'first-person investigation' style of doco (Michael Moore-style). He puts himself at the centre of his research and then presents what he found. His resultant works are very subjective, context specific inquiries filtered through his perspective of the world. That's exactly what naturalistic inquiry is and so is absolutely the perfect methodology to guide my research.

I love when things fall together like this.

Enlightenment

Today I've spent working on my methodology chapter. It feels so good to get out of the constraints of writing objectively!! It is amazing. As soon as I began to use 'I' and to talk about who I am as a documentary user-researcher-practitioner I felt so much more passionate about what i was doing and less tentative about making mistakes/ getting it wrong. And, the best bit, it takes much less time to write!

It's quite enlightening really. I've been so conditioned to write objectively that I hadn't noticed how difficult it was.

I'm FREE! :o)

What am I as a researcher?

Just wrote this on the discussion forum for the 'Practice-led ...' course I'm doing. It was quite enlightening to unpack who I am and why I know what I know -

Two things come to mind immediately when I ask myself this question which highlight my interpretivist approach. Firstly, living in a university world I am creating documentaries in a research context as opposed to a commercial context. This has a huge impact on the kind of work I produce. The focus in industry is on audience and sales. My focus is on exploration and innovation. A commercial doco maker has probably never heard of the leading critical thinkers of doco theory: Nichols, Corner etc whereas they are a cornerstone of my knowledge and therefore influence my productions.

Secondly, my social/cultural construct influences my view of what documentary is and what its purpose is. Being a teenager in the 1990s meant that popular documentary to me was a mix of fact and fiction (docudramas, reality TV) so I'm quite accepting of these types of doco whereas older generations aren't. Growing up in a middle class, Australian context means that to me, the purpose of documentary is to tell stories whereas for someone growing up in perhaps, lower classes of anywhere, Middle East, Africa or any other setting where it was a struggle to live then the importance of documentary as a tool for social issue commentary might be more important.

Dial M for Methodology

I'm doing this online course at the moment which has me focussed on thinking through my methodology. I was introduced to this fantastic book, 'Visualizing Research' (Gray & Malins, 2004) ... oh how I wish i had this book 4 years ago when I was battling my way through understanding the beast that is methodology. Anyway, it's directed at arts and design research students so it explains the tough bits of the subject (all the different paradigms) in plain english.

The book has unpacked the whole 'practice-led' research thing for me. I'm part of the world of Constructivism, this is the theoretical zone where experiential learning (learning through practice) fits in. I'm conducting a naturalistic inquiry (conducted in natural settings with the researcher at the centre).

Constructivism is about learning through active exploration within a social context based upon individual experience and knowledge. The ontology (nature of reality) is relativist (yes, that's me) and epistemology (the nature of the relationship between the researcher and knowledge) is subjectivist (and, yes, that's me too). My beliefs and knowledge are context sensitive, subjective, relative to me. And the methodology is hermeneutics which is based upon individual constructions of knowledge. I remember writing all about hermeneutics a few years ago ... ahh ... good times :o/ ... Gadamer ... the lens through which we see the world affects how we see the world.

And of course, this is where this blog fits in right? This journalling this the the filtering station between practice and research, where the two affect and process each other. Nice. I get it.

Gray & Malins, 2004, p99

"The journey of research is rarely straightforward: the destination is usually not clearly fixed, although you have a proposed route; the terrain you encounter may make you alter your route and may require you to travel using several modes of transport and various forms of all weather gear!"

How's the documentary going?

So, November 10, 2009. 19 months into this PhD journey and it has been a ride much like a hurricane. Going round and round in circles. About two months ago I made the decision to include an artefact into this research. I hope to use this space to process the journey of the production of the artefact. There always should have been one, it's not all that useful to theorise about documentary, it's a practical thing so there needs to be some kind of practical demonstration of it in this research. I think.

Anyway, I've returned to the old favourite, The Universal Brotherhood for the documentary. The 16mm film has finally made its way from the US, to Sydney and it now rests with us here awaiting transfer to a format I can actually use (HDV). That 30 year journey of the film in itself has been an incredible one and the plan is to include it as one of the subplots of the doco.

Accompanying the 16mm film is about 30 reels of 1/4 inch audio tape, a majority of it is synced sound for the 16mm film. We managed to find a machine that can play these things and I've now captured all of it to digital. Another incredible journey was found in listening to and logging these reels. They seem to have captured and perfectly preserved many different 'modules' of the UB (Universal Brotherhood), different aspects of their life as it was in 1978. I find it fascinating, I wonder if anyone else will? :o/

I did a bit of desktop research into the original filmmaker Deacon Chapin. Not much out there in cyberspace on him. He was mainly known of as a ski photographer by the sounds of it. He died in 2001, aged 49.

I did find a bit of a eulogy for him -

"Deacon found life and energy in places most people would never think of looking. Alpine lakes, clouds, unusual stones, arrowheads, and secret desert campsites were all living spirits to him. Amazing phenomena surrounded us everywhere once you understood that anything was possible, he believed." (http://www.liquidmoonsports.com/stories36.htm)

Ah yes, that does sound like someone who would have been interested in Fred Robinson and the UB. I'd like to find out more about what inspired him and his team to travel all the way to WA from the US in 1978 to make this film on the UB. Must have been quite a considerable financial investment for them.

So, how's the documentary going? Weeeell, it's on pause at the moment. A few ethics considerations to make which seem to be shaping up as quite a headache. This causes me to ask the questions do I really want to make this film? Will it really be worth the trouble? In answer, the first thing that comes to mind is, 'yes!' I've tried several times to let this UB thing go but this 16mm film is what keeps bringing me back to it. At first, it didn't look like it would ever get into our hands but now, after 5 years it is here and it has got me interested again. To me it is amazing that this film was shot 30 years ago and has sat in storage, waiting, waiting for someone to come along and do something with it. The footage has outlived its creator and who knows what is in store for it in the future. Referring back to that eulogy above, amazing phenomena surrounds us everywhere and anything is possible.

What's this all for?

The purpose of this blog is to help me reflect on my experiences throughout this PhD. Inspired by Gray & Malins (2004) book. I need to write what this is all for right here so that I remember, sourced from Gray & Mallins (2004, p.59) -

Description
Identification of an event or incident
Factual description/account of what I did and what happened

Evaluation
How well did I do it?
How valuable was it?
What did I learn? What didn't I learn?
How did you feel about it?
What sources of information did I find and how valuable were they?
Why did I make a certain decision?
What was the most difficult thing?
What was the most satisfying thing?
What would I have done differently?

Summary
List pros and cons/strengths and weaknesses
What does it all mean?
What advice would I give to someone?
Identification of new key questions.

So, that is what this is all for ... now i just gotta do it!