I would like to get our discussion started with a few key points from "Words from the Heart".
From the chapter: "One of the reasons why poor communities are so seldom heard is because of the documentary bias - the bias of the written word - which exists at all the key stages of development planning, implementation and evaluation. People are not consulted enough because the main dates take place in documents which they do not write or in meetings which they do not attend."
"A central part of any attempt at listening is a commitment to accept the idiom of the people who are talking... contributes to a more equal relationship... Ideally, it should take place in the speaker's mother tongue and interviewers should respect traditional ways of communicating, instead of imposing "vertical " systems, such as questionnaires and surveys, or insisting the use of the official language".
Two questions to respond to: 1. In Development planning and program creation, do you think policy should be in place to require collection of testimonies from the poor or unheard in order to supplement the development stages quoted above? (World Bank and some NGOs are doing this on a selective basis - see pg. 3).
2. In circumstances/studies where surveys, focus groups, and other quantitative/qualitative data collection tools are necessary, how would you balance this need with the need of personal accounts? How does one give due weight to both the quantitative and collected data, as well to personal testimony? Should the same persons who are interviewed be required to fill out the surveys, etc... ? If not, would we be eliminating quantitative data that represents those poor/unheard from people?
Thanks, Lisa! I'm just going to personalize this a little bit: What about in our own documentary work? Is this an argument for documentary arts - that it provides a way of giving voice (through audio or video) to those whose points of view otherwise are lost or discounted?
And in your own work, how does doing work in the community's mother tongue and its preferred ways of communicating resonate? What changes might it mean for your project plans?
I think I just used the name of the book... the chapter title (I don't have it with me) is something about listening... It is definitely in the binder that Joy gave to us. After the Document oriented towards Kids...and after the equipment lists. Sorry I can't give more help now (stuff is at home!)
Thanks, Anna, for your question - this is from Slim and Thompson's Listening for a Change, so actually we are ahead of ourselves by a week. So don't worry if you haven't read this yet! It's definitely pertinent to fieldwork, though!
Click here for a site on outreach plans for documentary projects.
We won't have a lot of class time to discuss this but I will have a few comments about the importance of thinking about outreach from the beginning of a project.
I have the charge of blogging about the SOHP website.
The guidebook is very helpful for me, one having never completed an interview. I now definitely feel more comfortable going into my first interview with these notes and guidelines.
For those who have done interviews previously, do you find this information helpful, insightful. What other tools or guides have you used?
The technical guidelines also gave me some great insight. I definitely have a lot to learn! I went on ebay and priced Marantz recorders...WOW.
The examples of field notes, and the transcript are great reference pieces.
Hi aspiring documentarians! I volunteered to comment on Bruce Jackson's Chapter 7, Fieldwork. Thanks to CDS, in Feb 08 I attended the showing of Jackson's very famous doc called Death Row - Jackson was visitng at the time and led a discussion afterwards. If you've never seen the film, I highly recommend it, especially after reading a few of his articles. Death Row's interviews are deep, patient, varied and personal.
I could relate to Jackson's comments that "You're there to get information you don't already have . . . A contract has been made, sometimes tacitly. The informant has decided to help you . . . The informant has his or her reasons for talking and you're justifying those reasons."
Whether it's photography, audio or video, I feel very strongly that subjects are involved by choice, and I am a vehicle to convey their message. Photo subjects probably have less choice because a camera can be much less obvious and the shot can be taken in seconds - hardly giving the subject time to decide whether s/he will continue to participate.
What do you think about the metaphor of photo/audio/videographer as the vehicle to convey the subject's story? Have you ever had a subject refuse to be part of the shot? What did you do? What do you think you would do? Do you think this presumes too much anonymity on the part of the interviewer?
Jackson reinforces something I can never hear often enough - don't be afraid of silence! Don't fill up the subject's silence. Let the subject fill the silence! You might be very surprised (and thankful) for what you get at the end of a relatively uncomfortable silence. How do you handle silence in an interview? Do you embrace it or try to smother it?
I could also relate to his comment that he walks around the location carrying his equipment so subjects can get used to him and the camera/recorder. Then they're not surprised when he starts to use them. Do you do this? Do you think it would be a good approach? Are you open to trying this approach?
He discussed two interview styles: directive and non-directive. Do you think you use one more than the other? How? Why? This is always a big challenge for me. I like to prepare questions but I also like to be open to thinking about and asking spontaneous follow-up questions based on the subjects responses. What works best for you? How do you handle this balance?
Finally, his discussion about the machines we use was very insightful, especially our trust in them. Do you think audio recorders can make you a bit lazy? Is your work defined and/or confined by your equipment? Is there an alternative? Are you a minimalist or total geek about equipment? I love good, reliable equipment but try to remind myself that it is simply the translator - it's job is to absorb my perception of the subject's humanity/spirit/presence/uniqueness - that quality that makes me want to capture the subject in the first place. But I'm humbled over and over again - often those qualities get lost in the translation. Sometimes the equipment captures the moment even better than how I saw/heard it, but more likely what is captured through the equipment doesn't live up to my hopes or expectations.
I would love to write more, but I have been sitting at my desk all day writing and writing and writing on a project due first thing in the morning. Now my brain is simply drained of anything coherent. So forgive. But, I'm loving Bruce Jackson's piece. I get a real feel for what fieldwork is out of the realm of the theoretical. I think his comparison of some kinds of interviewing with therapy is dead-on (and leaving space around the conversation reminds me of the absolute rule for designers of leaving space around type in a layout design). The concrete suggestions about how to put a documentary together is great since this is my first class and the closest I've come so far to putting a documentary together is when I've helped my kids with their science projects (never one of my favorite things to do). And by the way, the classes are stimulating and exciting. Wednesday night is beginning to be the best night of the week.
Just a side note on the issue of responsibility to "tell the truth" implicit in documentation, which has been coming up regularly in our discussions. Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker, has a regular blog on the NY Time website that often deals with this subject in relation to journalism, documentary film, and art. I highly recommend checking out the archives here: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/)
His posts can be a bit long, but they're usually worth a bit of scrolling.
As some of you probably know, he received a lot of flack for his heavy-handed use of reenactments in his last film, Standard Operating Procedure, about the abuses at Abu Ghraib, so it's interesting to hear him wrestle with whether images, in film or photography, can approach some form of truth.
I am not sure if everyone else is missing pages from Wendy Ewald's piece "I Wanna Take Me a Picture." I seem to be. Maybe this was on purpose.
I really enjoy her perspective having worked before with a Youth Documentary Project. I appreciated the idea of having children find old photographs and then reflecting through writing/poetry about what they see. I kept thinking about the book by Robert Coles "Their Eyes Meeting the World."
I think it could be particularly important to do this work with children of underserved, or marginalized communities in order to bring out their voices. To often we hear their stories through voices that are not their own - statistics about devastating poverty, crime, educational failure. All children should be given the opportunities and skills to tell their stories for themselves. Teaching children these skills can be quite empowering and teach them that they can be active agents too.
12 comments:
I would like to get our discussion started with a few key points from "Words from the Heart".
From the chapter:
"One of the reasons why poor communities are so seldom heard is because of the documentary bias - the bias of the written word - which exists at all the key stages of development planning, implementation and evaluation. People are not consulted enough because the main dates take place in documents which they do not write or in meetings which they do not attend."
"A central part of any attempt at listening is a commitment to accept the idiom of the people who are talking... contributes to a more equal relationship... Ideally, it should take place in the speaker's mother tongue and interviewers should respect traditional ways of communicating, instead of imposing "vertical " systems, such as questionnaires and surveys, or insisting the use of the official language".
Two questions to respond to:
1. In Development planning and program creation, do you think policy should be in place to require collection of testimonies from the poor or unheard in order to supplement the development stages quoted above? (World Bank and some NGOs are doing this on a selective basis - see pg. 3).
2. In circumstances/studies where surveys, focus groups, and other quantitative/qualitative data collection tools are necessary, how would you balance this need with the need of personal accounts? How does one give due weight to both the quantitative and collected data, as well to personal testimony? Should the same persons who are interviewed be required to fill out the surveys, etc... ? If not, would we be eliminating quantitative data that represents those poor/unheard from people?
Thanks, Lisa! I'm just going to personalize this a little bit:
What about in our own documentary work? Is this an argument for documentary arts - that it provides a way of giving voice (through audio or video) to those whose points of view otherwise are lost or discounted?
And in your own work, how does doing work in the community's mother tongue and its preferred ways of communicating resonate? What changes might it mean for your project plans?
Did I miss something? I don't see an article titled "Words from the Heart" in the readings. Am I suppose to have a copy or is it elsewhere?
I think I just used the name of the book... the chapter title (I don't have it with me) is something about listening... It is definitely in the binder that Joy gave to us. After the Document oriented towards Kids...and after the equipment lists. Sorry I can't give more help now (stuff is at home!)
Thanks, Anna, for your question - this is from Slim and Thompson's Listening for a Change, so actually we are ahead of ourselves by a week. So don't worry if you haven't read this yet! It's definitely pertinent to fieldwork, though!
Click here for a site on outreach plans for documentary projects.
We won't have a lot of class time to discuss this but I will have a few comments about the importance of thinking about outreach from the beginning of a project.
I have the charge of blogging about the SOHP website.
The guidebook is very helpful for me, one having never completed an interview. I now definitely feel more comfortable going into my first interview with these notes and guidelines.
For those who have done interviews previously, do you find this information helpful, insightful. What other tools or guides have you used?
The technical guidelines also gave me some great insight. I definitely have a lot to learn! I went on ebay and priced Marantz recorders...WOW.
The examples of field notes, and the transcript are great reference pieces.
Is anyone else missing pages from the Bruce Jackson, Fieldwork piece, or Joy, was this done on purpose? :-)
Thanks!
Hi aspiring documentarians! I volunteered to comment on Bruce Jackson's Chapter 7, Fieldwork. Thanks to CDS, in Feb 08 I attended the showing of Jackson's very famous doc called Death Row - Jackson was visitng at the time and led a discussion afterwards. If you've never seen the film, I highly recommend it, especially after reading a few of his articles. Death Row's interviews are deep, patient, varied and personal.
I could relate to Jackson's comments that "You're there to get information you don't already have . . . A contract has been made, sometimes tacitly. The informant has decided to help you . . . The informant has his or her reasons for talking and you're justifying those reasons."
Whether it's photography, audio or video, I feel very strongly that subjects are involved by choice, and I am a vehicle to convey their message. Photo subjects probably have less choice because a camera can be much less obvious and the shot can be taken in seconds - hardly giving the subject time to decide whether s/he will continue to participate.
What do you think about the metaphor of photo/audio/videographer as the vehicle to convey the subject's story? Have you ever had a subject refuse to be part of the shot? What did you do? What do you think you would do? Do you think this presumes too much anonymity on the part of the interviewer?
Jackson reinforces something I can never hear often enough - don't be afraid of silence! Don't fill up the subject's silence. Let the subject fill the silence! You might be very surprised (and thankful) for what you get at the end of a relatively uncomfortable silence. How do you handle silence in an interview? Do you embrace it or try to smother it?
I could also relate to his comment that he walks around the location carrying his equipment so subjects can get used to him and the camera/recorder. Then they're not surprised when he starts to use them. Do you do this? Do you think it would be a good approach? Are you open to trying this approach?
He discussed two interview styles: directive and non-directive. Do you think you use one more than the other? How? Why? This is always a big challenge for me. I like to prepare questions but I also like to be open to thinking about and asking spontaneous follow-up questions based on the subjects responses. What works best for you? How do you handle this balance?
Finally, his discussion about the machines we use was very insightful, especially our trust in them. Do you think audio recorders can make you a bit lazy? Is your work defined and/or confined by your equipment? Is there an alternative? Are you a minimalist or total geek about equipment? I love good, reliable equipment but try to remind myself that it is simply the translator - it's job is to absorb my perception of the subject's humanity/spirit/presence/uniqueness - that quality that makes me want to capture the subject in the first place. But I'm humbled over and over again - often those qualities get lost in the translation. Sometimes the equipment captures the moment even better than how I saw/heard it, but more likely what is captured through the equipment doesn't live up to my hopes or expectations.
See you tomorrow evening! Debbie
I would love to write more, but I have been sitting at my desk all day writing and writing and writing on a project due first thing in the morning. Now my brain is simply drained of anything coherent. So forgive. But, I'm loving Bruce Jackson's piece. I get a real feel for what fieldwork is out of the realm of the theoretical. I think his comparison of some kinds of interviewing with therapy is dead-on (and leaving space around the conversation reminds me of the absolute rule for designers of leaving space around type in a layout design). The concrete suggestions about how to put a documentary together is great since this is my first class and the closest I've come so far to putting a documentary together is when I've helped my kids with their science projects (never one of my favorite things to do). And by the way, the classes are stimulating and exciting. Wednesday night is beginning to be the best night of the week.
Just a side note on the issue of responsibility to "tell the truth" implicit in documentation, which has been coming up regularly in our discussions. Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker, has a regular blog on the NY Time website that often deals with this subject in relation to journalism, documentary film, and art. I highly recommend checking out the archives here:
http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/)
His posts can be a bit long, but they're usually worth a bit of scrolling.
As some of you probably know, he received a lot of flack for his heavy-handed use of reenactments in his last film, Standard Operating Procedure, about the abuses at Abu Ghraib, so it's interesting to hear him wrestle with whether images, in film or photography, can approach some form of truth.
Katy says,
I am not sure if everyone else is missing pages from Wendy Ewald's piece "I Wanna Take Me a Picture." I seem to be. Maybe this was on purpose.
I really enjoy her perspective having worked before with a Youth Documentary Project. I appreciated the idea of having children find old photographs and then reflecting through writing/poetry about what they see. I kept thinking about the book by Robert Coles "Their Eyes Meeting the World."
I think it could be particularly important to do this work with children of underserved, or marginalized communities in order to bring out their voices. To often we hear their stories through voices that are not their own - statistics about devastating poverty, crime, educational failure. All children should be given the opportunities and skills to tell their stories for themselves. Teaching children these skills can be quite empowering and teach them that they can be active agents too.
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