Survive, Revive

I’m pleased to report that I survived the grueling conclusion to my Honours year. After taking the liberty of a wonderful summer break I’m back, blogging again and producing again.

I’m picking up after Honours finished in late 2008 with the Cooper tale- interviews planned this week. The story has certainly grown some legs though with The Age reporting the story Nov ‘08, followed by a hugely successful event at Parliament House (Melbourne) on December 2nd to commemorate William Cooper. I managed to collect some real gems from the night from a number of William Cooper’s descendants who had really interesting things to say so I’m really excited about cutting those together and seeing where it leads.

A half-hour documentary was produced and assessed for  Honours and, happily, it was well received  by the examiners. The goal for the coming weeks is to seel the deal with an hour program for radio and online.

Questions??????

At a meeting this morning with the two main participants in the project I’ll be asking many many questions, which I’ve nutted down to a few different sections:

• What are the aims of this project, what do you/we want to achieve out of it?
• Keeping in mind the limitations certain broadcast agreements can have, what would be the most comfortable approach to planning a broadcast? (ie: pre-sale commission, independant production)
• Who are we going to invite to be part of this project by way of contributing interviews? What sorts of questions should be be asking? How do we make sure we ask them in a culturally appropriate way?
• Explanations of the various protocols we need to be aware of
• Any ideas about musicians who might be interested in being involved?
• Discussion of ideas about the style of the piece

Busy meeting indeed!

Canadian Apology

Way across the other side of the world another historic apology has taken place. Reading through the comments its amazing to see the same sentiments being raised in response to a governmental apology to Aboriginal peoples for past injustices sanctioned by government policy. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise I suppose the similarities were quite startling for me to read. Even though of course I was very aware of similar kinds of histories elsewhere in the world, I found myself thinking, surely no one could have botched things up as much as we did, surely ours was a once off mistake?

In a way it would be comforting to think that Australia is the only nation struggling to grapple with the ugly elements of our past but of course we are just one of many.

Much to do

The next stage of the doco is not so much working out how the collaboration will work (I have a meeting next week to work out the final nuts and bolts with those involved) but more about the actual production choices, which is my major role as the producer (naturally).

Over the last week I have tried to work out what it will sound like. In Search of Edna Lavilla was recommended by my supervisor as an approach to consider. I really liked lots of aspects about this feature, there were really nice textures with the sunny side of the street being whistled and played throughout, the personal interviews and conversations with the mother as they discovered new parts of the story and especially conversations reading newspaper articles together. Also the court transcript reenactments weren’t as corny as I’d imagined.
But I think the thing that stood out for me in terms of techniques I could adapt was the way that the search for Edna’s grave was the thread throughout where snippets of the walk through the cemetery were returned to as a kind of transition from scene to scene.

The other documentary which was suggested was Fernando’s Ghost which was more of a historical reconstruction more in line with Hindsight type programs. It used a mix of historic transcripts and news articles and interviews with historians, as well as some soundscapes to build a sense of place. I really enjoyed this one too and certainly will take on how the historic interviews were woven into the story so that it had a sense of discovery.

I’ll talk about some of these ideas at the meeting next week and get down to some serious search for textures: newspaper articles, the actual protest letter, places, newsreels from reporting on the holocaust, newsreels about the missions, people alive who remember the time, especially people from Moroopna.

Fun!

Transient decisions

In the making of the online documentary I experienced quite a few technical limitations of my own knowledge. If I could have my wish list granted I would have changed the following:

• Roll over: sound plays, Roll off: Sound stops. As it is users have to be really careful in turning off the sounds by clicking before moving on to the next one, to make sure they don’t have overlapping sounds playing at the same time. Although I have included instructions and tips on the index page (and in blue to make sure they stand out) it doesn’t feel nice to have more than one voice in your head, especially when you have headphones on. Sort of like the programs that try to explain how schizophrenia feels. The other advantage that this set-up would have had would been that users could preview the sound without feeling trapped in it. I discussed in a previous post trying to add smaller bite-sized sounds that started playing on roll-over where the entire sound sequence would play on a click, but when I constructed this I was confronted by many more problems. Users no longer had the ability to stop the sound once started and there was a risk of repetition, not only between some of the bites and the sequence but really annoying repetition of the bites themselves if you rolled-on, rolled off and then decided to play the entire sequence to have to hear the bite again first.
• Roll-over, button goes from almost transparent to opaque. This was just a greedy visual thing but I think it would have visually isolated each of the individual stories and would have contributed a more empty, transient space where the stories exist.
• That the blue chapter title at the bottom of the sound window was a link with its own visual properties. I tried tinkering with the HTML but to little success, everything I tried either affected the link scheme of the whole page or the code I wrote showed up in the visual window.

Other than that I was fairly pleased with the result. I liked the atmosphere created by the photo and the representation of the people telling their parts of the narrative. I liked that I was able to give as much control as I could to the user in the navigation and in starting and stopping the sounds. Most of all I’m pleased with the adjoining blog and the way this sets up not only a feeling of a real living culture but also a space where the narrative can evolve and grow in a virtual space which spans the diaspora. I really hope part of it takes off in a similar way to the Sonic Memorial Project.

Many thanks to Dean for putting up with my hair-brained ideas and helping find solutions, and to Julian and JHC for trusting me with this part of their overall project.

Question of Distribution

Distribution, in my mind, has been key to the objectives of ethical practice. Enghel refers to the distribution process quite heavily in her analysis and looks that the limitations different approaches bring in terms of editorial control. There are a number of things to consider under modes of distribution agreements; for me I feel it important to be able to guarantee participants some broadcast outcome when I ask/invite them onboard the project. I obviously fail to meet the communities’ needs if no-one ends up hearing it. But distribution agreements have other effects such as significantly impacting the funding available. A commission kills two birds; it would bring both production funding and guarantee broadcast. On the flip side the broadcaster or funding body writes the conditions on the level of editorial control.

In Enghel’s Argentinian example she found that although they had collaborated with the community on editorial decisions, she realised that the funding/distribution body still had the power (even though it was not an used in this case) to pass down their own editorial demands which would have been absolute.

In my naivety, I imagined I’d have some responsibility to send drafts to the ABC and to be in fairly constant communication and to act on their requests. I’d anticipated an “interesting” experience in finding balances of what participants were comfortable with and what the ABC was comfortable with. However, after quite a lengthy conversation yesterday its clear that the editorial power necessary under the ABC commission protocols leaves no room for consultation in the editoral phase. The way it works it for producers to go to the program offices (Sydney) to work through the recorded raw material into an initial structure, through editing, through to final sound-engineering. So clearly there is a significant conflict between the requirements of ABC and the approach which makes up the body of research and argument for this project. So I’m feeling that this is a minor set-back.

But all is not lost, the ABC producer I spoke to was really supportive of the story idea and encouraged me to consider producing it independently. Independent Production is not only financially more risky with no guarantee of selling the feature in the end, but it also means I have less guarantee of a national broadcast when approaching participants, although it would be possible to approach other community broadcasters. But I suppose its a balance of what is more important for the participants; is it consultation and opportunities for editorial input or is it a guarantee of broadcast outcomes. In keeping with consultative practices, I’ll probably need to discuss this with the communities involved.

A day ahead of time

The online documentary is online a day early… I would love to hear what people think of it, not only the content but also the way it feels to move around. I realise that a more sophisticated knowledge of flash would have really helped which has caused some limitations over user control but I hope that the attempt at interactive sonic sound spaces has come through.

For now its waiting for approval from other people involved but I’m looking forward in anticipation for the sense of relief of being completely finished.

Question

Maybe research is like trekking, where you can see the peak ahead within grasp in front of you, only to see an expanse of peaks stretching to the horizon. Of course in a photograph it is beautiful, but trust me, when you have blisters on your feet, a pack weighing you down, jelly legs, feeling freezing cold and wet, its just disappointing.

So, although I started with many questions which I have begun to answer in the exegesis, there are still so many more popping up.

I think I began wondering if it was possible to produce a radio feature in collaboration with participants which would satisfactorily address the omnipresent ethical problems in documentary production. Through my research I have begun to argue that yes, there are ways to adapt documentary production methodologies to serve the interests of the participants involved. This argument will be practiced throughout my own production process, which is really important, because although I have now written almost 5000 words stating how it is theoretically possible, the crux of the argument is lies in its actual possibility in real world use.

The new questions growing in front of me are about how the participants feel during the process. Was consultation real, were they comfortable, do they feel ownership, some real sense of participation? Are they comfortable with the result? Am I comfortable with the result? How does this practice affect the media object’s outcome?

Which I think neatly draws me back to the initial questioning; Is it possible to produce a documentary which doesn’t exploit and exclude its subjects? What practices could be used to include participants in the creation of representation? Do participatory methodologies as guided by Enghel’s case-study lead to a true sense of inclusion, consultation, ownership and participation.

Transient website

Posts reporting on the progress of the Jewish documentary have been quiet, mostly because I went into a little melt-down over the technical challenges of sounds, however, I am super pleased to announce that the website should be ready for launch on Friday.

In fact, I’ve put together a blog to act as the interactive platform for the documentary. I’m really hoping that this aspect of the documentary will be taken up and will be a successful in creating an evolving and organic continuation and participatory mode of story-telling of itself. Although I do realise this there is no guarantee.

The idea to include an aspect for submitting stories came from the Sonic Memorial project and from the Us Mob online documentary, although when listening to the producer talk about his experiences he found the Your Mob or participatory space to be the least taken up. He said there were technical difficulties with narrow band access to the internet in trying to send video, and also just, for many complicated reasons, a disinterest in contributing.

I have listed several ways for people to contribute, including getting in touch with me for assistance (we could do a phone interview etc.), just to try and alleviate the obstacles people may have. But the truth is that after I do my best to make the space comfortable and inviting, there is very little I can do but wait and see.

The other recent change I’ve made is to create short (3-5 second) bytes-summaries of the longer sound sequence. These will be activated by mouse roll-over, then to hear the entire sequence users click the person. (Ok- that sounds complicated, but it will all be clear when the website is launched) The reasoning behind it is that I want the navigation to be through sound but I don’t want viewers to be blindly choosing what content they hear. I felt that blind navigation was really not serving my intended design of users choosing their own path, so my hope is that the bytes give a few more cues for user’s choices.

So what have I learnt from this exercise? Well I think I might try and find an entire course in Flash before I attempt to take on a project like this again!

A good day of sorts

Some people write in bursts, I write in slogs. After a very productive 6 hours I am very close to 5000 words… yes, already.

Over the past few days I’ve relayed the feedback I got from Adrian on Thursday (something attune to “You’re trying to write a Masters in the space of an Honours degree”) to those I’ve spoken to when asked about how the year is going. No one, especially not my housemates or my parents, was the least bit surprised.

Just a wee bit to write up now and still a few bits of yellow symbolising unfinished or out of place points/thoughts and then time to clean up: drafts 1,2,3,4,5…. . Oh, and the bibliography, am still shouldering that bad habit. But I must say there is something a little relieving about having ideas in text rather than existing in a chaotic whir of thoughts competing head space. Ah ha, maybe I will finally get some restful sleep tonight!