Or watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQorucl1Ow&t=3s

Personal Narrative

My academic interests are user experience and idea promotion through multimedia. And my research in this semester concentrates on a special form of video – documentary.

When I was a child, CCTV (China Central Television) relayed many BBC Nature documentaries as well as historical documentaries about different cultures and arts. These inspire not only my love for nature, aesthetics, but also my love for documentaries.

My curiosity about social phenomena prompted me to try many humanities courses in different research directions during my undergraduate study. My love for aesthetics also made me interested in art and design. But whenever I start to get interested in a field, I find documentaries to watch about that field. My previous researches on fan culture, LGBTQ, films about World War II and other topics have been more or less guided by documentaries. This led me to develop an academic interest in the genre — where its authority comes from, how to define those virtual scenes in documentaries, and in what form documentaries can be presented to the audience. As a M.A. candidate of Communication, Culture and Technology program, this semester, I sorted out the relationship between documentaries and films as well as the most mainstream documentary theories. During my research, I found that different from other sociological studies, film studies could adopt more diverse research objects — the content of the film itself, the audience reaction, the shooting and editing process. Unlike other sociological studies, film researchers can be directly involved in the shooting process, and many of them are documentary filmmakers themselves. This makes research in this field more dynamic and creative. The results of academic research could even be immediately put into practice in the content of an experimental film.

Although most people’s first impression of documentary may be the antithesis of film, in fact, documentary is not strictly an independent genre in terms of its content or production process. I think the significance of understanding this point is to realize what kind of audiovisual codes audiences are more likely to be influenced by, what techniques could use to enhance the feasibility, and what is the essence of virtual and real in media communication.

In the next semester, my research direction will focus on advertising clips and video production. Through the interpretation of classic cases and my own shooting practice, I hope to deepen my understanding of how to convey information and empower others through visual and auditory means. This is much like when I was trained as a graphic designer, learning how to evoke the viewer’s emotions through different tones, and how to maximize the delivery of necessary information while attracting others attention through layout.

There are so many creative ways to convey concepts in various media forms, and I hope you will continue to follow my research in this area.

Annotated Bibliography for This Keyword:

[1] Allen, M. (2017). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods (Vols. 1-4).

A reference book of communication research methods, introduce various research methods and various fields related to communication research.

[2] Eitzen, D. (1995). When Is Documentary: Documentary as A Mode of Reception, Cinema Journal. Vol 35. No. 1. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225809.

The article is about the truth telling dilemma in documentary making. The claim made by Marcel Ophuls in the article is amusing.

[3] Ellis, J. (2005). Documentary and Truth on Television: The Crisis of 1999. In J. Corner, & A. Rosenthal (Eds.), New Challenges in Documentary. Manchester University Press.

Examine documentary genre as well as the crisis documentary faced in new digital age. The form changing.

[4] Grierson, J. (1966). Grierson on Documentary. University of California Press.

A famous documentary director as well as a respectful scholar in film studies. Who gave the name “documentary”, not the inventor of “documentary”.

[5] Hight. C. (2010). Television Mockumentary: Reflexivity, Satire and a Call to Play. Manchester University Press.

But I don’t think the meaning of making documentary is just about telling the truth. If people are really eager to truth, they may do some research and read some academic articles. Documentary is more about evoking, raising attention, it could be more dramatic than lecture / academic article, and it can last longer than news reports. It is special is not because it is telling the truth, but because it is striving for truth and leading more people introspect on some issues. It may not be good to pull documentaries off the altar because of excessive demands for authenticity.

[6] Hight, C. (2014). Mockumentary. In Attardo, S. I. (Ed.). (2014). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (Vol. 2, pp. 515–516). ProQuest Ebook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Introduce features of mockumentary, popular themes of mockumentary, very brief and easy to read.

[7] Kenigsberg, B. (2015, June 26). Documentary Filmmakers Talk About Manipulation in Their Work. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/movies/documentary-filmmakers-talk-about-manipulation-in-their-work.html

This is a very helpful article, short and neat. It introduced the director’s view of manipulation in documentaries and how they manipulate it in their own work.

[8] Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2012). A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001

This is an online access book provide a list of terminologies in film studies, and provides some background history for each term.

[9] Mendict. R. and Malnick. E. (2011). BBC Accused of Routine “Fakery” in Wildlife Documentaries. The Telegraph.

There are many other articles about fake scenes in nature documentary. One of the famous one is BBC Nature documentary ‘Frozen Planet’, the scenes of baby polar bears are actually filmed in zoo.

[10] McLane, B. A. (2012). A New History of Documentary Film, Second Edition. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Not very agree with the points in this book. For me it’s really hard to measure what is “more functional and austere”, isn’t good theme essential to fiction films as well? Art always originate from life, not from castle in the air.

[11] Natusch, B., & Hawkins, B. (2014). Mapping Nichols’ Modes in Documentary Film – Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Helvetica. IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijmcf.2.1.07

This article examined the documentary taxonomy theory of Bill Nichols and combine the theory with two case study: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Helvetica. A good example of how to navigate case study in documentary studies.

[12] Nichols. B. (1991). Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Indiana University Press.

Camera can lie, and everyone has their own perspectives, if the manipulation is unavoidable, why don’t we embrace it and use it in proper way.

[13] Nichols. B. (1994). Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Indiana University Press.

The line between fiction and nonfiction is actually blurred sometimes. (Only read Introduction).

[14] Nichols, B. (2007). The Terrorist Event. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1026

Examine different media representation forms toward 9/11.

[15] Nichols, B. (2010). Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition (2nd ed.). Indiana University Press; JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/stable/j.ctt16gznjb

This book introduces a brief history, main features, main modes (6 modes model, p.149-152) of documentary and thinking about questions related to documentary. A helpful book to get familiar with documentary studies. Bill Nichols is an expert and a pioneer in the study of documentary film. More about the author: https://cinema.sfsu.edu/people/emeriti/bill-nichols

[16] Nichols, B. (2012, September 13). Introduction to Documentary. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlx1b3q3Dc

This is a short video of his own introduction of his new book Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition.

[17] Redfern, N. (2014). Quantitative Methods and the Study of Film, Invited Lecture, University of Glasgow. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333641375_Quantitative_methods_and_the_study_of_film

It is interesting to read this conference paper, quite straight forward points, didn’t finish all the pages, don’t know whether he talks more about deconstruct visual code in film or not. I think that’s a great part for quantitative research and may result in some interesting experimental films. Cause many filmmakers in Soviet Union are film studies scholars. They know lots of techniques that filmmakers didn’t notice and use those techniques in flexible way （montage for example）.

[18] Renov M. (1993). Theorizing Documentary. Routledge.

Known for the “mode of desire”. Renov explained the documenting behavior from desire perspective. Renov believed that documentary is about to record and to express. Expression is essential in documentary.

[19] Roscoe, J., & Hight, C. (2001). Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality . Manchester University Press

A book especially on mockumentary. It provides the origin of mockumentary, essential codes/elements of mockumentary and three degrees of it (parody, critique and hoax, deconstruction). Another important book by Craig Hight is <Television Mockumentary: Reflexivity, Satire and a Call to Play> (no online resource available).

[20] Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods: A Guidebook and Resource. ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

A great book for introduction of qualitative research, it includes brief history of qualitative research, common used methods, and how to write a qualitative research paper, what you should let the reader know. Beginner Friendly.

[21] The “Hawthorne Effect” – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/09.html

The existence of the observer itself will affect the state of the observed, thus producing false results.