Improvisation as a research methodology: exploring links between filmmakers’ practice and traditions of enquiry across the academy

ABSTRACT

This article concentrates on one form of creative practice, improvisation, considering how it has been used as an experimental method within filmmaking as well as in research enquiry. Drawing on my professional experience in the field of narrative fiction filmmaking, as well as interviews with film professionals, I show how a close examination of improvising processes opens up illuminating points of comparison with research methodologies across the academy. This article is an interdisciplinary review, drawing together ideas about improvisation beyond film, looking broadly across the creative arts and most pointedly, drawing an unexpected link between practice research in film and the traditions of laboratory research methodologies within Social Psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Improvisation
• research methodology
• practice research
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• performance-centred mode

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dominic Lees is Associate Head of Department – Filmmaking, at the University of the West of England (UWE) and is an experienced film director and screenwriter. His directing practice in the UK, Germany, France and Poland has included forty episodes of television drama, short films and the multi-award winning independent feature film, Outlanders (2008). His writing has been for film industry publications such as Variety, as well as for scholarly journals. His doctoral research developed theories of film practice and he was a contributor to the 2017 book, Directing for the Screen (Routledge).

ORCID

Dominic Lees http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3787-3740

Notes

1 The University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has founded the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICPI).

2 Extract from interview with Dominic Lees, 5th December 2016.

3 Dominic Lees interview with Federico Godfrid, 18th November 2015.