Interactive documentary is considered by practitioners and scholars to be a form which facilitates meaningful and socially impactful collaborations with citizens and communities. However, the majority of interactive documentaries continue to proliferate ethnographic documentary filmmaking methods. Projects are authored by interdisciplinary teams of filmmakers and media professionals, with only some stages of production designated for collaboration with the citizens and communities which these documentaries represent. This practice-based research asks the question: can a disruption of the dominant documentary film production methods used in interactive documentary expand and further sustain community co-creation partnerships?
Through participatory action research methods, this research has developed an inclusive new community-led production methodology. The sub-questions used to unpack and expand upon the central research question are:
1) What new methods can a community of co-creators develop when they are empowered to look beyond broadcast production standards and traditional documentary filmmaking methods?
2) Can auto-ethnographic accounts, reflections and critical analysis from community co-creators and creative practitioners contribute new knowledge to shape future production practices and praxis in the form?
3) Is it possible to transcend the dominance of bespoke single websites and platforms?
Through a critical review of the current methods and literature of the form, followed by practical interventions to develop new, community-inclusive production methods, this thesis culminates with the guidelines for a new production toolkit for communities and practitioners.
This thesis details the workshop practices of the Leeds International Women’s Filmmaking Collective and the production journey of the co-created, transmedia interactive documentary project Our Here. The digital media and material-based elements of the submission directly address explorative practices which grapple with the key question and sub-questions of this practice-based research. This research project engages in transformative dialogues with Allister Gall’s (2016) Imperfect Cinema project which investigates the emancipatory potential of imperfect practice, and David Gauntlett’s (2011) scholarship on everyday creativity as a method for connection and social capital.
Through the development of a community-inclusive conversational production method, this research contributes new findings which illuminate how citizen co-creators can craft and re-interpret the interactive documentary form through their own methods and collective practices. In exploring community-based conversations as a platform for an interactive documentary, this practice also impacts the form: offering DIY production and collaboration methodologies for both citizen co-creators and creative practitioners. This research establishes how the interactive documentary as practice-based research can be developed inclusively, using collective workshop methods to convene cross-cultural communities during times of social change and political crisis.
