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.