School of Film and TV - Theses
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ItemHope: towards an ethical framework of collaborative practice in documentary filmmaking( 2010)There appears to be a renewed interest in the ethics of documentary filmmaking among academics and writers in Australia and elsewhere. It is also clear from my own and other documentary makers’ experience that not only are ethical decisions in our daily work of great importance and concern but that the contemporary filmmaking environment, greatly influenced as it is by the needs and demands of the television broadcasters, can militate against ethical behaviour by filmmakers, not least in their relationships with the participants in their films. The increasing ‘production line’ nature of the industry and inherent contradictions between formal release forms and the need for filmmakers to establish trust are just two of the factors at play here. This thesis begins with an examination of these and other developments in the Australian industry that are tending to undermine the work of so-called ‘independent’ filmmakers. I reflect on my experience in making commissioned documentaries and, in light of a lack of ethical guidelines available to documentary filmmakers other than the editorial codes applicable to current affairs and journalism and protocols for working with indigenous communities, I compare this with the importance attached in the field of narrative therapy, for example, to ethical protocols dealing with transparency, reflexivity and the power relationship between ‘researcher and researched’. It has been pointed out by Brian Winston and others that the key to ethical documentary making lies in the relationship between filmmaker and participant, and that generally filmmakers are left to work out for themselves what this means (Winston 1995, p. 240; 2008, p. 252). My own response has been to develop a model of collaborative filmmaking that seeks to equalise the power imbalance between filmmaker and participant and encourage the active participation and self-advocacy of the latter. In this thesis I examine this model and its characteristics using my recent documentary Hope as a case study. This film was made largely outside of the film industry ‘system’ and therefore without the constraints often imposed by broadcasters or industry bodies. Having posited the principles behind an ethical, collaborative approach I examine how its adoption worked out in practice during the making of Hope, which, although ostensibly a simple documentary about one person’s life, threw up difficult ethical dilemmas, as all documentaries tend to do. I explore how some of these dilemmas were resolved in a collaborative context and how such an approach provides space to the participant to contribute in shaping the resulting film. The influence of this approach on aesthetics is also explored. In conclusion I draw attention to the wider implications of a collaborative approach for the relationships between filmmakers and the industry they serve and note that irrespective of how we approach the filmmaking endeavour, in the end we are faced with the ongoing re-examination of our own ethical values as well as those of the industry bodies we deal with. It is to be hoped that this empirical exploration of ethics through a collaborative approach to documentary practice will stimulate further debate, not just among academics and writers but throughout the documentary community at large.