Contexts of film practice

This special issue explores the contemporary position of filmmaking and the diversity of moving image practice across the academy. It aims to examine how traditional research methodologies and approaches can be broadened to contextualise current practice research environments and reflect climatic developments.

This issue presents a selection of papers from the themed symposium ‘Contexts of Film Practice’ hosted by Lincoln School of Film & Media, University of Lincoln, 2018. The symposium invited speakers to focus on the fluidity in film practice research methods to better understand how current moving image practice is perceived and measured. Papers also considered how those methods of research might additionally influence film pedagogy as well as the debate identified by Bell as ‘the pressure to “publish or perish” and to compete for scarce research funds’ (Bell 2006).

Traditional film research and scholarship, published in book-based formats or similar, has tended to investigate film by seeking out associative theory, or an analysis of films and their contexts from a variety of perspectives. Filmmakers, on the other hand, often suggest that their artefacts ought to speak for themselves. The influx of active filmmakers entering higher education institutions, in part due to industry changes, coincided with increasing academic pressure for production outputs in all forms to be framed and delivered as ‘REF-able’ [Research Excellence Framework-able]. The symposium aimed to investigate these pressures and turn a spotlight on those engaged in practice-as-research in film. It further explored how some film practitioners are bridging what might be seen as a dichotomy between those who make films and those who write about films. And finally, it examined how practice-as-research in the film production context impacts on wider society in REF terms: How might films and their makers contribute to the progression of knowledge in the context of academic research?

The symposium was scheduled to cover the breadth of film practice through panels convening on emerging themes including new documentary, experimental and unwritten methods; people, place and histories; pedagogy, context and impact; the screenplay and adaptation.

The scope of articles in this special edition represent the amplitude of film as Practice Research currently undertaken by international academics. The papers respond collectively to the comprehensive thematic focus of ‘contexts for film practice’ whilst each article individually, represents the distinctiveness and diversity in the emerging themes noted above.

The focus of the first article explores context: specifically, the interdisciplinary nature of film research. In Improvisation as a research methodology: exploring links between filmmakers’ practice and traditions of enquiry across the academy Dominic Lees provides a comparative strategy that examines how traditional research methodologies in the social sciences interlink and overlap with key aspects of film direction. The work makes particular reference to social psychology, a discipline that over the past 70 years has adopted research methodologies that sometimes closely resemble the techniques of filmmakers’ collaboration with their performers. ‘Performance-centred Film Practice’ looks at how forms of collaboration between actor and director are deployed by a distinct group of film practitioners. Finding correlations between this research and the long history of experimentation in the field of social psychology, Lees argues that Practice as Research in film performance utilises methodologies that should not be conceived as innovative and distinct from traditional academic practice. Rather, it should be understood as evolving from research traditions established in the 1950s. Developing the critical body of work around social psychology's research strategies, he references, in particular, the work of Australian psychologist Gina Perry, whose disruption of the research consensus opens an opportunity for creating cross-disciplinary discourses that may be insightful both for filmmaking Practice as Research and for social psychology.

The second article represents adaptation, a major source of film content yet not widely discussed by practitioner academics. Sally Waterman's The Waste Land Project: Framing Practice-Based Research through Literary Adaptation reflects upon the way in which the development of her video installations based upon T. S Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) were framed by adaptation theories identified by George Bluestone (1957), Geoffrey Wagner (1975), Karen Kline (1996) and Linda Hutcheon (2006). The study considered the relevance and usage of the literary source in relation to specific adaptation procedures, as it became apparent that her practice is positioned outside this domain, employing alternative methods of visual translation within a fine art context. Her research process raised important debates concerning the latitude of translation and enabled a non-literal, selective, emotional, thematic interpretation to emerge. The subversive, poetic language of European avant-garde films also influenced the work, allowing Waterman to position Eliot's poem within a modernist context, adopting the role of editor.

In the third article, John Mateer considers the ‘impact’ factor for television and film practice research in the contemporary age of VOD and SVOD. Digital Disruption and its Implications in Generating ‘Impact’ through Film and Television Practice-as-Research reminds us that both research funding bodies and the REF are increasingly looking at ‘impact’ as an important measure of project success. For those involved in film or television practice-as-research, demonstrating significance beyond the academy and measuring ‘reach’ has often been considered through the public visibility of their projects. Yet, it is becoming more difficult to reach target audiences due to the disruption caused by the emergence of on-demand distribution. This paper seeks to expand on a recent project looking at the impact of emerging on-demand services and associated business models including low-budget independent feature film production, to relate to film and television practice as research.

In another recent project, Digital technologies and the creative industries: how are on-demand platforms changing film and television distribution and consumption? Mateer et al also began formal investigation into the impact of emerging video-on-demand services and their associated business models on a variety of areas, including low-budget independent feature film production. This paper seeks to expand on that work, considering these issues as they relate to those involved in film or television practice-as research. Further, it examines the obstacles independent producers now face in this disrupted environment and looks at strategies some have developed to overcome them to reach target audiences. It considers how digital disruption may be affecting ‘REF-ability’ as well as how the approaches developed by industry independents might be adapted in an academic setting to help demonstrate and improve ‘impact’.

The fourth article explores people and place – specifically, the transdisciplinary knowledge emerging from creative documentary practice-led research inquiry, positioning themes within local discourses concerning Roma migration to Glasgow. In Technologies of the Self – Bridging Academic Theory and Practice-based Research Through Creative Documentary Enquiry, Nicola Black argues that Foucault's Technology of the Self (1988) provides not only a theoretical framing of how human beings are made subjects, but also how identity and belonging are shaped by structures of power, knowledge and governmentality that impact upon migrant experiences in Glasgow.

The final article illustrates the diversity in cinematic practice and the contribution it provides to interdisciplinary research, with a focus on the emerging theme of people and histories. Vesna Lukic's case study aims to trace the journey, down the river Danube, undertaken in 1939 by a large group of Jewish refugees from central Europe (later named the Kladovo transport) in order to escape Nazi persecution. Her study has relied on a wide interdisciplinary field, starting from film and history, but expanding to include other relevant discourses, like archaeology, geography, cultural studies or philosophy. Lukic sees Practice-as-Research as a space for making important contributions to contemporary debates on alternative modes of knowing within and beyond academia and views this as a form of authentic or experiential learning alongside approaches such as object, problem or enquiry-based learning. Its particularity that differentiates it from these other approaches is that practice-as-research foregrounds artistic ways of engaging with a subject matter that allow a practitioner-researcher to freely draw on diverse academic disciplines. In return, the respective disciplines are enriched with yet new approaches to general knowledge.