Skip to main content

Ethnography and Screen Production Research

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Screen Production Research

Abstract

This chapter explores what can happen when creative practice research meets ethnography. While ethnography has a long and proud history, creative practice is a relative newcomer as a research methodology. Often creative practice research in the screen production areas is obsessed with representation. Filmmaking, photography and screenwriting suggest representational research strategies with a strong focus on artifacts as texts. Over the last decade there has been a push in creative practice research toward research that emphasises the experiential. Ethnographic writing strategies provide useful alternatives and additions to reflection on process as a way of constructing knowledge. Ethnographic approaches capture the nuances of the experiential, affective and sensory aspects of everyday life. This chapter argues that there is much to be gained from mingling creative practice research with ethnographic approaches to research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Anderson, B., & Harrison, P. (2010). The Promise of Non-Representational Theories. In Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography (pp. 1–63). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baszanger, I., & Dodier, N. (2004). Ethnography: Relating the Part to the Whole. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative Research Theory, Method and Practice (2nd ed., pp. 9–34). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batty, C., & Berry, M. (2015). Constellations and Connections: The Playful Space of the Creative Practice Research Degree. Journal of Media Practice, 16(3), 181–194. doi:10.1080/14682753.2015.1116753. Accessed 30 Jan, 2017.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Batty, C. et al. (2015). Rewriting, Remaking and Rediscovering Screenwriting Practice: When the Screenwriter Becomes Practitioner-Researcher. In Refereed Proceedings of the 20th Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) (Writing the Ghost Train: Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering), 29 Nov.–1 Dec. 2015, Melbourne, Australia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berkeley, L. (2014). The 57 Tram: Smartphone Video Production and the Essay Film. In M. Berry & M. Schleser (Eds), Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. New York: Palgrave Pivot.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry, M. (2016). Out in the Open: Locating New Vernacular Practices with Smartphones. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 10(1), 53–64. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17503175.2015.1084173. Accessed 30 Jan, 2017.

  • Brabazon, T., & Dagli, Z. (2010). Putting the Doctorate into Practice, and the Practice into Doctorates: Creating a New Space for Quality Scholarship Through Creativity. Nebula, 7(1–2), 23–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgess, J. (2008). “All Your Chocolate Rain are Belong to Us?”: Viral Video, Youtube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture. In G. Lovink & S. Niederer (Eds), The Video Vortex Reader (pp. 101–111). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, M. (2001). The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. Oxford: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haseman, B. (2006). A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy (Theme Issue: Practice Research) 118, 98–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hjorth, L., & Pink, S. (2014). New Visualities and the Digital Wayfarer: Reconceptualizing Camera Phone Photography and Locative Media. Mobile Media & Communication, 2(1), 40–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys, M., & Watson, T. (2009). Ethnographic Practices: From “Writing up Ethnographic Research” to “Ethnographic Writing”. In S. Ybema et al. (Eds), Organizational Ethnography: Studying the Complexity of Everyday Life. London: Sage. http://www.corwin.com/upm-data/26764_03_Ybema_Ch_02.pdf.

  • Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, T. (2015). Foreword. In P. Vannini (Ed.). Non-Representational Methodologies: Re-Envisioning Research (pp. vii–viii). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobson, M., & Larsen, S. (2014). Ethnographic Fiction for Writing and Research in Cultural Geography. Journal of Cultural Geography, 31(2), 179–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kerrigan, S. et al. (2015). Studies in Australasian Cinema, 9(2), 93–109.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lorimer, H. (2005). Cultural Geography: The Busyness of Being “More than Representational”. Progress in Human Geography, 29(1), 83–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Narayan, K. (1999). Ethnography and Fiction: Where is the Border? Anthropology and Humanism, 24(2), 134–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Narayan, K. (2012). Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pink, S. (2001). Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pink, S., & Hjorth, J. (2012, January 2). Emplaced Cartographies: Reconceptualising Camera Phone Practices in an Age of Locative Media. Media International Australia, 145(1). http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1329878X1214500116?journalCode=miad. Accessed 01 Nov, 2012.

  • Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Temple Smith.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, H., & Dean, R. T. (2009). Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sullivan, G. (2009). Making Space: The Purpose and Place of Practice-Led Research. In H. Smith & R. Dean (Eds.). Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts (pp. 41–65). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vannini, P. (2015a). Non-Representational Ethnography: New Ways of Animating Lifeworlds. Cultural Geographies, 22(2), 317–327.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vannini, P. (2015b). Introduction. In P. Vannini (Ed.), Non-Representational Methodologies: Re-Envisioning Research (pp. 1–19). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marsha Berry .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Berry, M. (2018). Ethnography and Screen Production Research. In: Batty, C., Kerrigan, S. (eds) Screen Production Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62837-0_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics