Panel 11: Film and Theatre
Chair: Dr Elspeth kydd
The video editor and the dilemmas of a researcher-practitioner
Gideon Benari, [Independent researcher]
ethnography, researcher-practitioner, research methodology, collaboration
Editing is one of the least understood stages of the filmmaking process, in part because the roles of the director and editor overlap. In addition, the intimate nature of the work environment makes it difficult for an external researcher to go unnoticed without having some influence on the often delicate relationship between the director and the editor. This paper explores the difficulties encountered by a researcher-practitioner (the video editor) while conducting ethnographic research on the editing process. The case study follows the editing team (director, reporter and editor) of a current affairs story for a UK news channel.
Undertaken by a video editor with over sixteen years experience of programme making in mainstream television, the paper’s focus is one dilemma confronting the researcher-editor: whether to reveal to his co-workers that he is conducting research. Revealing this information carries the risk of facing disapproval from the rest of the team which could cause interpersonal tension and even result in loss of future income for the researcher-editor.
The paper proposes two solutions for overcoming this key difficulty. One entails partial or complete revelation of the research to the editing team during or after the project is completed. The other, seeks alternative routes to validate and cross-reference the ethnographic data and its analysis through conversations with colleagues not involved with the project. The paper concludes that, ultimately, in order to gain access to such a sensitive environment as the editing process some aspects of ethical codes of practice need to be reconsidered.
The engine of narrative, or is there a machine in the ghost? Revisiting film as anthropology
Norman Taylor, University of the West of England, Bristol
cinema, digital technology,remediation, agency, internet, actor network theory
A film text can be seen as a commercial proposition and as an automated expression of (usually narrative) ideas. The intensity of its technologically assisted functions has led philosophers like Zizek and Deleuze to claim that film itself is a form of thinking, and a recent publication points to a renewed interest in this approach. Since its emergence, support from audiences, from state and from private institutions, enabled the moving image to evolve into a complex and intimate human/non-human relationship. But having been ‘normalised’ and commodified by ‘cinema’, this relationship has fragmented with the arrival of digital technology. Perhaps this relationship articulates more than the social and commercial convenience of cinema: as we are called to put new questions to history, it may be time to review marginalized, anthropological approaches to film.
This paper arises from part of a Ph.D dissertation (Cinematic Perspectives on Digital Culture: Moving Image Technology and the Question of Agency) which interrogates the use of specific films to articulate theory, and asks whether it is viable to employ a single text to articulate:
- a ‘universal’ relationship with technology, and
- the place of film in a journey to a digital future (mobilising key markers of conceptual change).
Some questions about key approaches (i.e. Latour, Manovich) will be hazarded and theoretical models (i.e Bolter and Grusin, Gaudreault and Marion) considered. Issues in studies of technology (such as mobile phone usage) as well as reception theory, emergence of the ‘picture personality’, the Hollywood , virtual and digital star will be raised.
The playwright-filmmaker - history, theory and practice
Othniel Smith, University of Glamorgan
playwright-filmmakers, dogme, theoretical practice
This paper will present aspects of my doctoral research into the work of dramatists who became filmmakers – specifically Preston Sturges, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Mamet, and Neil LaBute (others not studied in detail include Woody Allen, David Hare, Mike Leigh and Francis Veber). I began with the hypothesis that there is something distinctive about the work of filmmakers who have a background in writing for text-based theatre, an arena where the authorship is, on the whole, not a vexatious issue, as is the case in commercial cinema. Through case studies involving textual and contextual analyses of their films, I found common threads linking their work, in respect both of their working methods and their approach to text and performance. From this, I evolved a theoretical position involving the development of a tentative “dogme” designed to smooth the path between writing plays and making films, and produced short no-budget videos illustrating it.
Reconciling high and low: developing a methodology for the study of Shakespeare in popular culture
Sarah Martindale, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
shakespeare, audience, adaptation, methodology, culture
My doctoral project is very much motivated by issues of methodology. Studying Shakespearean films for my Masters Degree dissertation I became frustrated at the restricted scope of the academic work that I encountered. The dominant paradigm in the field is adaptation studies, with its focus on the comparative analysis of literary and cinematic texts, and preoccupation with the question of fidelity. What this approach fails to consider are all the myriad cultural and cinematic factors in addition to the source text that nevertheless feed into and flow out of Shakespearean films. Such things interest me because they influence the way Shakespeare is perceived as an icon, changing the complex matrix of cultural association that we all have access to. While scholars painstakingly measure adaptations up to their own interpretive ideals, ordinary viewers experience these films in a very different way.
The aim of my thesis is to set aside intellectual assumptions about cultural value and examine audience responses to recent mainstream Shakespearean films that were high profile and commercially successful, and therefore had a considerable cultural impact. My interest lies in the means by which these films invite audiences to form a positive relationship with them, and how audiences have responded. In order to investigate this process I make use of textual, reception and audience methodologies. As I near the end of my third year of research it will be useful to share and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of my approach with the postgraduate community.
Panel 1: Imperialism and Globalisation
Panel 2: Online Citizens and Democracy
Panel 3: Television Audiences
Panel 4: Mediating Identity 1
Panel 5: Reporting the Conflict
Panel 6: Journalism and Social Responsibility
Panel 7: Sexual Representations in Cinema
Panel 8: Popular Culture
Panel 9: Still Image
Panel 10: Branding, Advertising and Corporate Cultures
Panel 11: Film and Theatre
Panel 12: Alternative Film
Panel 13: Feminism, Gender and Identity
Panel 14: Fan Culture and Online Audiences
Panel 15: Public Service Broadcasting and Radio
Panel 16: Design for Screen
Panel 17: Uses of Music and Sound in Film
Panel 18: Mediating Identity 2
Panel 19: Citizens, Interaction and the Public Interest |
