2020/2 – #Method

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Editorial NECSUS
NECSUS Editorial Board (2020) , S. 1-4
Methods we live by: Proceduralism, process, and pedagogy
Stevenson, Michael; Witschge, Tamara (2020) , S. 117-138
This article contributes to ongoing conversations about how we relate to methods and the implications of the ‘methods turn’ for the different epistemic communities that comprise media studies. We argue that methods are increasingly valued as scientific capital and educational capital, leading to further formalisation of methodologies (or theoretical perspectives) as ordered and sequenced research methods. Although intended to make research more transparent and accessible, such formalisation obfuscates the research process when it hinges on the notion of methods as ‘ordered procedure’. Against this way of imagining and talking about methods, we draw on process theory, which provides a language for understanding research as improvisational and creative, and reconsider what it means to do research skilfully. Understanding methods as process opens up new ways to talk about and teach methods that connect to our inherent capacity for curiosity and to embodied sense-making practices – in other words, it allows for a reframing of research methods as ‘methods we live by’.
Mistake as method: Towards an epistemology of errors in creative practice and research
Korolkova, Maria; Bowes, Simon (2020) , S. 139-157
The article focuses on creative research as a practice, a form of making, attending to the making of mistakes – errors, deviations, detours – as the uncertain ground of an emerging methodological paradigm. Our specific focus here is upon media and performance practices. Guided by references to a range of theorists who place mistakes in the centre of their thinking – Russian formalists, Giuliana Bruno, Maurice Blanchot, Tim Erchells, and Tim Ingold – this article explores the potentials for error in method – and the potentials of error as method. We begin by observing a genealogy of mistakes as method in the theories of Russian Formalists, recognising a longstanding fascination with errors and mistakes – ‘mistake as a constructive principle’ for Yuri Tynianov and estrangement for Viktor Shklovsky, then move on to the notion of errare as ‘a map of theoretical and emotional itineraries’ for Bruno. We continue by proposing how these fascinations shape contemporary interdisciplinary methodologies in the humanities, from qualified success to absolute failure. Our preoccupation with error spans every level of creative processes, as mistakes become not only object of enquiry, but a methodological paradigm. The second part of the article focuses on practices that use error as method. In making, practising, performing – in creative research of all kinds – erring is linked to temporality. Practice itself may be recognised as a continuous journey, where method is only ever understood as provisional. In relating such temporalities to philosophical discourses on errors, the article moves towards erring as a contemporary research tool.
Encounters and affinities: Exchanges through the essay form
Guha, Malini (2020) , S. 159-180
The term interdisciplinary has achieved ‘buzzword’ status across academic channels in recent years. Interdisciplinary methods of research are often carried out as a matter of import and export; terminology is borrowed from across disciplines by scholars and is then applied in an analytical fashion to whatever case study is at hand. In this article, I will present two case studies that position the essay form and especially the essay film, as privileged sites of interdisciplinarity as praxis. The first example centres on the relationship between illustrious cultural geographer Doreen Massey and filmmaker Patrick Keiller. The second case study focuses on the longstanding relationship between cultural studies luminary Stuart Hall and filmmaker John Akomfrah, before and after his tenure as co-founder of Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998). These case studies illustrate the intellectual promise of interdiscipinary exchange as praxis, shaped by relations of affinity, reciprocity and duration.
Teaching writing with images: The role of authorship and self-reflexivity in audiovisual essay pedagogy
Letizi, Roberto; Troon, Simon (2020) , S. 181-202
Methodologies for teaching audiovisual essays often map the discipline-specific objectives of the form and the practical and philosophical advantages it offers as a mode of assessment. However, a particular division has emerged between the kind of work created by students and the professional audiovisual criticism circulated by critics and scholars that is considered exemplary of contemporary practice. In this context, the role of the author as a self-reflexive agent can be seen as a link not only between students’ expectations of traditional written assessment and the fundamentally different imperatives of the audiovisual essay as a subjective mode of creative research, but also between audiovisual essay criticism and historical iterations of the essay form. This article explores the extensive redevelopment of a capstone undergraduate subject on audiovisual film criticism, undertaken via a fellowship awarded to develop teaching innovation and enhance curriculum design. We detail major pedagogical interventions, including a return to writing, examine key motivations in the development of course content, and establish the critical significance of encouraging students to think of themselves as authors – that is, to consider their own agency in the ways they encounter, interpret, and utilise images. Reflecting on some outcomes of the redeveloped subject, we pose it as a test case for a pedagogy that encourages students to think ambitiously with images, dissolving divisions between professional audiovisual criticism and audiovisual essays as a method of assessment. We argue that when thinking with images in this manner is embraced as a component of pedagogical methodology, students’ competencies with images can be leveraged to enable work that is academically rigorous, critically sophisticated, and evinces highly subjective authorial agency.
Film studies and the experimental method
Slugan, Mario (2020) , S. 203-224
Kuleshov’s montage experiments have arguably been a key impetus for inauguration of film theory. Yet, although cognitivists – and even some continental film philosophers – have long appreciated the importance of neurological and psychological studies for understanding film, they rarely undertake experiments themselves. Instead, the work is primarily done by psychologists with special interest in film. This paper advocates for a deeper engagement with the experimental method in film studies, through design and/or criticism of specific experiments. First, to dispel the longstanding disciplinary skepticism against the method, I propose that arguments against cognitivism as methodologically imperialistic conflate the methods of analytic philosophy and scientific experiment. I then retort to strong (D.N. Rodowick) and moderate skepticism (Malcolm Turvey) about the experimental method. Against the former I argue that 1) some questions in film studies demand experimental answers, and 2) these experiments do not transform film studies into a science of film, and 3) inferences drawn from experiments are not incommensurable with humanistic inquiry. In the latter case I point out that although there is a difference between humanistic and natural phenomena and the principles behind them, there are some principles behind humanistic phenomena which are discoverable through experimental method. Second, to illustrate the importance of the experimental method I draw attention to the fact that a key assumption in film studies – that fiction films change our beliefs about the actual world – is an empirical claim still awaiting experimental proof. I specify how one experiment (co-developed with Ed Tan) testing this assumption might look. I also pay special attention to problems of replicability and representativeness at the crux of the current crisis in psychology. In conclusion, I invite film scholars to a close reading of the proposed experimental design as a way of coming to grips with challenges, opportunities, and the potential blind spots of experimental work.
Documentary’s longue durée: Beginnings, formations, genealogies
Musser, Charles (2020) , S. 21-50
We have tended to think of the documentary as emerging in the early 1920s within the framework of cinema. Yet the documentary tradition possesses a much longer historical trajectory, beginning with public lectures that were illustrated with models and scientific experiments. Appearing in the English-speaking colonies of North America as early as the 1730s, these were a crucial component of the American Enlightenment. The key term was ‘lecture’. Religious groups had used the church-based lecture to communicate the truth of God using the bible as the basis for understanding the world. Appearing in secular venues, these public presentations offered new kinds of truths determined through observation, science, reason and analysis. Creating a new dispositif, they used an increasingly diverse array of illustrative materials – models, charts, demonstrations, paintings, panoramas, reenactments, quotations from literary or musical sources, and even very occasional lantern slides. The term ‘illustrated lecture’ emerged gradually in the 1840s but went through a radical redefinition in the 1870s as the mode merged with the popular but distinct stereopticon exhibition that used photographic lantern slides. By the 1890s and 1900s these illustrated lectures gradually incorporated motion pictures, until many only showed films. When the lecture was replaced by intertitles in the late 1910s, the label ‘illustrated lecture’ became anachronistic and the term ‘documentary’ eventually filled the void.
Capturing film festival buzz: The methodological dilemma of measuring symbolic value
Burgess, Diane (2020) , S. 225-247
Film festivals have long been associated with ephemeral value creation, from the dynamic energy associated with the festival experience to the more static traces of cultural capital that remain once the events are over. This article investigates film festival buzz as it has been conceptualised in film festival studies, and explores existing measurement frameworks drawn from industry stakeholders and federal agencies in the Canadian context. Even though film festival buzz appears to function as an institutional antecedent to consumer buzz in the film value chain, serious methodological dilemmas are raised by the intersecting stakeholder interests that shape knowledge production.
Towards an understanding of children’s screen genres in the streaming video era: Reflecting on shifting intersections between digital media and screen studies
Balanzategui, Jessica (2020) , S. 249-272
On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) service Netflix, have replaced television to become the most popular means of accessing video content amongst children in a number of countries. These streaming video platforms have introduced new generic paradigms into the domain of children’s media, and children’s genres form, circulate, and are consumed on these platforms in ways that differ from legacy media (film and television). The streaming video ecology thus poses new challenges for studies of children’s screen genres and media consumption. This article offers a methodological provocation, contending that this context calls for the integration of traditions in screen studies – namely audience research and genre analysis – with approaches to platform analysis drawn from digital media studies. Such an interdisciplinary methodology promises to illuminate how new children’s genres have formed in the streaming video ecology, and how these genres circulate culturally, including how children engage with these content types.
Disciplinary itineraries and digital methods: Examining the Kinomatics collaboration networks
Verhoeven, Deb; Moore, Paul S.; Coles, Amanda; Coate, Bronwyn; Zemaityte, Vejune; Musial, Katarzyna; Prommer, Elizabeth; Mantsio, Michelle; Taylor, Sarah; Eltham, Ben; Loist, Skadi; Davidson, Alwyn (2020) , S. 273-298
The Kinomatics project () is an international, interdisciplinary project applying innovative digital practices to study creative industries, particularly the film industry. Kinomatics uses data-driven tools and methods to examine the social, cultural, and economic ‘relationality’ of film distribution as a complex, overlapping, co-constituting media infrastructure. What is unique to this project is the way we apply the same methods for the study of film circulation to evaluate our own collaboration networks and determine future research opportunities. We produce both research tools and analysis that is focused on intervening in, rather than just describing, the creative industries. Kinomatics derives this recursive approach to method from digital humanities. This article conceptualises our approach with a critical social network analysis of how our own collaborations are structured and open to being reshaped. Being mindful of our multi-disciplinary methods as dispersed ‘teams of teams’ emphasises the relational dimensions of our work. These connections represent a significant interpersonal investment that is not always evident in the formal measurement of academic success, such as co-authorship for example. In researching how cinema operates as a global cultural industry, Kinomatics team members aim to collaborate on a ‘global’ scale themselves, across geographic and disciplinary boundaries. This article will show how our migration across specialities in inter-team collaboration and co-authorship has contributed to new approaches and collaboration dynamics.
Film festivals and the first wave of COVID-19: Challenges, opportunities, and reflections on festivals’ relations to crises
de Valck, Marijke; Damiens, Antoine (2020) , S. 299-302
The International Labour Film Festival in Turkey
Ozgen-Tuncer, Asli (2020) , S. 303-311
Beyond a shadow of a doubt: For the Elche International Independent Film Festival dying is not an option
Jurado-Martin, Montserrat; Martínez-Cano, Francisco-Julián (2020) , S. 313-320
San Luis Obispo International Film Festival: The social responsibility of redesigning an American film festival
Whitaker, Justice A. (2020) , S. 321-327
SXSW, Amazon, and the difficulty of staging an exclusive event online
Hobbins-White, Phil; Limov, Brad (2020) , S. 329-338
Come together? Curating communal viewing experiences for hybrid and online film festivals
Brunow, Dagmar (2020) , S. 339-347
Story within a story: Vues d’Afrique in the time of COVID-19
Petty, Sheila (2020) , S. 349-356
‘Color Mania’ and ‘Chromatic Modernity’: The polychrome experience of the moving image
Catanese, Rossella (2020) , S. 357-366
The Queer Fantasies of the American Sitcom / Queering Gender
Chairetis, Spyridon (2020) , S. 367-374
The Origins of the Film Star System / George Clooney
Polley, Sarah (2020) , S. 375-382

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