From doctoral project to cinematic release: A dialogue on the impact pathway of Colours of the Alphabet

ABSTRACT

Since its inception the practice-based PhD has had as its point of reference the traditional text based PhD. Whilst methodologies may differ, and the exact division and relationship between the written element and the practice output continues to vary between institutions, in the case of lens-based documentary practice at least, the film output has the potential to reach and impact upon audiences outside the academy in a way that traditional text-based doctorates rarely do.

The dialogue below explores this ‘second public life’ of the practice-based doctoral output and in particular, the transition from a doctoral project to a more explicitly public facing and collaborative project. This transition forms the basis of the discussion between Professor Nick Higgins, the supervisor and latterly the producer of the documentary, Colours of the Alphabet and Dr. Alastair Cole, the doctoral candidate and director of Colours of the Alphabet.

KEYWORDS:

• Research impact
• collaborative practice
• practice based phd
• film distribution
• audience engagement
• documentary film practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Professor Nick Higgins is the Director of the Creative Media Academy and Chair in Media Practice at the University of the West of Scotland. His research explores the nexus between media forms, subjectivity and cultural change. To date, the outcome of this research has resulted in 6 short form and 4 feature length documentaries that have received numerous awards including Best Short Documentary (Berlin 2004), Best Human Rights Documentary (WACCS/SIGNIS 2008), a 2013 BAFTA Scotland nomination and Best International Children Rights Feature Film (2018). His films have screened at over 90 international film festivals and have been broadcast on 9 international television networks, resulting in audience figures of over 5 million. Professor Higgins is currently the supervisor and executive producer on a number of active screen research projects including several interactive documentaries on the uws.io web platform. In 2017 he directed and produced his first 360 Virtual Reality documentary, The Circuit.

Dr Alastair Cole is a Lecturer in Film Practice, within Media, Culture and Heritage at Newcastle University, UK. He is a documentary filmmaker and practice-based researcher whose current work is focusing on inquiries situated broadly within linguistic anthropology, as well as elements of documentary film practice, including subtitling, translation and editing. His work aims to embrace the potential of creative documentary film to foster new insights into the social and political aspects of language use. His most recent documentary film as a director, Colours of the Alphabet, premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival 2016. It was shortlisted for best newcomer at the 2016 Greirson Awards, has since had over 30 international festival screenings, and has been released across Africa in 30 languages. His previous short documentary films have also been broadcast in 27 countries and screened at 40+ festivals around the world, including at both the 2011 and 2012 Cannes Critics Week film festivals.

Notes

1 The lead supervisor on all projects was Dr. Nick Higgins, at that time a Senior Lecturer in Visual and Cultural Studies within the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and programme director of the Masters in Cultural Studies. Second supervisors were drawn from across subject areas within the school and more broadly across the university, with supervisory boards created with colleagues open to the deployment of a lens-based practice methodology including in the disciplines of Theology, Geography, Anthropology, Middle Eastern Studies and Law.

2 Alastair Cole successfully completed his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh and now holds a Lectureship in Film Practice at Newcastle University. Nick Higgins left the University of Edinburgh in 2013 to take up the role of Director of the Creative Media Academy and chair in Media Practice at the University of the West of Scotland.

3 Alastair Cole’s two previous short documentary films prior to Colours of the Alphabet were Do You Really Love Me? (2011) and Pikku-Kale? (2012). Both premiered at Cannes Critics Week, and were made with the financial support of Media Europe in co-production with Nisi Masa France.

4 It is worth noting that in many practice-based PhDs, the supervisor role is in fact very close to the producer or executive producer role and it is not uncommon for PhD films to credit the supervisors as such. The doctoral candidate, nevertheless, ultimately has to defend their project as ‘an original contribution to research’ and the relationship at the point of submission is quite distinct from a producer and director relationship, in so far as the doctoral film must be able to be defended without necessarily having to be ‘successful’ in industry terms.

5 DocPoint is Finland’s major documentary film festival, held in Helsinki annually in late January. (https://docpointfestival.fi) Twelve for the Future is a European Documentary Network supported feature documentary development workshop, principally for Nordic directors and producers but with a history of welcoming Scottish filmmakers.

6 We Are Northern Lights was a mass participation crowd-sourced documentary film directed and produced by Nick Higgins, and co-directed by 121 Scottish participants, whose footage contributed to the final film. In addition to festival screenings, the film was released in all Cineworld cinemas in Scotland in 2014. For more information see www.wearenorthernlights.com

7 The EU Honeycomb project was concerned with developing digital skills throughout the west coast of Scotland and Northern Ireland and there were funds available to take practitioners from these areas to international events. For more details see http://thehoneycomb.net/

8 For more details on Nils Pagh Andersen’s films see: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0026226/

9 Nils Pagh Andersen’s projects The Act of Killing and Human Flow were both nominated for Oscars in 2014 and 2018 respectively.

10 Annie’s husband had refused to allow filming with him or in the family home in Lusaka.

11 The film received financial support from the Creative Scotland Film and TV Development Fund.

12 The film was presented to potential commissioning editors, distributors and sales agents at Sheffield Doc/Fest, IDFA (Amsterdam), EIFF (Edinburgh), HotDocs (Toronto) and the European Film Market at the Berlin Film Festival.

13 This is the subject of a PhD submission by Fritz Kohl at the University of Edinburgh (2017).

14 Post-production was financially supported by Creative Scotland.

15 The film was launched at the festival to coincide with UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day held on the 21^st of February each year. To read more about the festivals inclusive approach see: https://www.screendaily.com/features/glasgow-film-festival-director-we-want-to-be-the-opposite-of-elitist-festivals/5127040.article

16 The producer of marketing and distribution (PMD) for the project was Ged Fitzsimmons.

17 Make Your Market was a six month project based workshop co-delivered by the Scottish Documentary Institute and We Are Tonic. The programme was designed to develop marketing and distribution strategies of feature film projects at various stages of production, alongside training new PMDs. See https://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/opportunities/make-your-market/

18 Liz Lochhead is a Scottish poet and was the Scottish Makar, or National Poet, between 2011 and 2016. Her poem Kidspoem/Bairnsands was read by the poet at the Colours of the Alphabet cinema tour launch night at the Glasgow Film Theatre. See http://www.ayecan.com/read_scots/liz_lochhead.html for the text of the poem.

19 The cinema release of the film garnered media coverage from Scottish Television, BBC Radio, and newsprint including the Glasgow Herald thanks in large part to Liz Lochead’s involvement.

20 Post film discussion guests included: Professor Norman Gillies OBE (Founder of Sabhal Mor Ostaig), Derrick McClure (Author on Scots Language, and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Aberdeen University), Zoe Venditozzi (Author and teacher), Mark Wringe (Gaelic lecturer at Sabhal Mor Ostaig), Lizelle Bischoff (Director of Africa in Motion Film Festival), Roddy Maclean (Gaelic broadcaster & journalist), Tony Breen (Deputy Head Teacher of Portree High School), Dr Ann Frater (Programme Leader Gaelic Lews Castle College), Donald Macleod (Gaelic and Modern Languages,The Nicolson Institute).

21 Previous films distributed; A Massacre Foretold (2008), The New Ten Commandments (2009) and We Are Northern Lights (2013).

22 The film has received over 30 festival screenings as of early 2018. These include international and regional film festivals, specialist African film festivals, and human rights film festivals. You can see a complete list at http://coloursofthealphabet.com/screenings

23 AfriDocs is an Africa wide broadcast and online platform that aims to bring the best of African and International documentary films to African audiences. You can see more at https://afridocs.net

24 The impact project was created and undertaken as a collaboration between Newcastle University and the University of the West of Scotland. The subtitling workshops were led by Dr Lee Williamson. The project also benefited from professional partnerships with the online subtitling software Amara platform and the subtitling company Screen Languages.

25 The impact project was financially supported through an ESRC Impact Accelerator grant and a Newcastle University School Strategic Research Grant with in kind support from the University of the West of Scotland.

26 The project also built on the authors’ previous impact projects. This included the delivery of 56 filmmaking workshops cross the Scotland within Nick Higgins’s feature film project We Are Northern Lights, as well as the creation of the teaching text book Learning Through Film: Human Rights in Scotland (Higgins and Cole 2011), based on the feature documentary The New Ten Commandments (2008).

27 Colours of the Alphabet is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources (DER) in North America. http://www.der.org/films/colours-of-the-alphabet.html