Using film as a source

Sian Barber

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780719098741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

A hands-on study skills guide that explores how film and moving image can be used as sources.

1

INTRODUCTION

The single most powerful obstacle to the historical use of film has been the historian’s view that compared with the masses of other documentary evidence available film was especially unreliable as evidence.¹

Film provides a fascinating insight into the past through documentary, archival and amateur film footage and a deliberately constructed historical world through feature films. However, using film as ‘historical evidence’ is far from straightforward; specific skills are required to understand the complexities of the visual medium, its relationship to the society from which it emerges, the industry which created it and those who consumed it. Despite these obstacles, film is a crucial means for understanding the recent past. William Hughes noted that ‘the public’s choice at the box office, provides a crude measure of the accuracy of the filmmaker’s hypothesis about popular values’, while Paul Smith considered that ‘film records the outlook, intentions and capabilities of those who made it; it illustrates in some way the character of the society in which it was produced and for which it was designed’.²

Film is one of the dominant cultural forms of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What people chose to see and what filmmakers chose to make reveal a great deal about the nature of contemporary life, prevailing social concerns, preconceptions, morals and manners. Film can reveals a myriad of attitudes, not simply of those who are in the film, but also those of directors, scriptwriters, producers and financiers. Perhaps most importantly, films can help us understand how past audiences responded to issues, characters and ideals. Film and moving image can help us probe the delicate relationship between culture and society, between film and audience, and between spectators and the text. The films that are consumed by a society, the film stars venerated and the preferred genres, as well as trends in performance style, cinematography and costume, can all shed light on preoccupations of audiences in past decades.

The skills acquired in the fields of history, politics, English literature, sociology, cultural and media studies can all help to explore film as ‘historical evidence’, but the study of film is a discipline in its own right. Film cannot be treated simply as a historical source, but rather needs to be understood as a distinctive medium, possessed of visual and textual codes. This study guide is intended to provide a starting point for those seeking to use film as a source. It is aimed at those who want to use film and moving image as the basis for research and offers advice on research methods, theory and methodology and film-based analysis. Everything included here is also intended to be good practice, whether it be conducting an interview, visiting an archive, undertaking textual analysis or defining a research question.

It is likely that not all sections will be relevant for all readers; some may be interested in using film to explore political ideology, others may be interested in the study of feature films, while others may be keen to explore audience responses to particular groups of films. Film is a broad medium and as well as identifying the range of methods through which you can approach it, this work also indicates how works supplementary to film can be explored and utilised within research. With this in mind, this guide suggests how you can gather data on film audiences, identify and explore film industry documentation and locate personal papers of film industry insiders.

For many years film was the mass medium of education, communication and entertainment. Yet film’s position has been eclipsed by the rapid growth of television and, more recently, the internet. While the medium of television operates under a different set of cultural imperatives, funding structures and production determinants, a great deal of what will be explored in relation to the visual qualities and research potential of film and its importance as a source can also be applied to television. However, television as a separate medium is not the principal focus of this work. This book will focus predominantly on film, and specifically on British films and the resources that pertain to this body of work. The focus is mainly British; Hollywood films are also referred to in passing, yet are not explored in significant depth or detail. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, to include a consideration of American resources would drastically increase the parameters of this work, and secondly, there are a great number of works which focus on Hollywood cinema and use Hollywood films as research examples. This work is intended to scrutinise British film culture and to offer ideas on how to explore, analyse, use and examine British films and cinema. The approach identified here for the study of British film, cinema and history can be applied to the different types of film produced and consumed anywhere in the world and so may be of use to students and scholars of any kind of film and moving image.

As well as being intended for those engaged in the study of film, this guide is also aimed at those who are keen to use film material in their research. There are many different ways in which film can be used to develop research, and the films themselves can either contribute to the overall topic of research or perhaps form the main body of the research material. For example, researchers might be keen to explore the visual representation of the ‘blitz spirit’ in British wartime film culture through newsreel footage or feature films, or to consider film propaganda in the extreme fascist regimes of 1930s. Perhaps the focus might be to examine changing masculinity in American films of the 1980s by focusing on stars such as Harrison Ford, Michael J. Fox and Tom Cruise. These research projects would require the researcher to use film in different ways. It is not simply a case of watching films to see what they are about and what they mean, but rather to analyse their textual qualities in detail, explore their production and reception contexts, and their relationship to industry and audiences.

It is also crucial to examine films in terms of their technical qualities and characteristics: films are both technical objects and a form of artistic expression, and this duality is crucial to fully understanding them. As James Monaco reminds us, ‘every art is shaped not only by its political, philosophical and economic factors but also by its technology’.³ It is not enough simply to concentrate on the aesthetic aspects of film; the researcher must also look at the technical factors in order to consider the impact of new editing, sound and cinematography techniques as well as special effects and computer-aided design.

Research into film could seek to understand film genres or movements further, to utilise film theory to explain the popularity of specific types of films in particular historical periods or to suggest a link between the visual culture of a decade and the preoccupations of the society which created and consumed it. It could seek to understand how industry and economics shape film products or explore how audiences responded to specific films or film events, such as Star Wars (1977), Gone with the Wind (1939) or Alien (1979). Research could focus on how newspapers respond to specific film texts such as the ‘video nasties’, or how film theorists understand and critique the work of Lars von Trier or Jean Vigo, or how researchers seek to make sense of the use of history in films about the past.

In order to do justice to any of these topics, an understanding of film as an object is required. Film is a crafted artefact. It is rarely produced by a single person, but rather depends on the creative and technical skills of a range of people. It is also never produced in a cultural and social vacuum. It is both a product of a society and an object of consumption for society. Regardless of its genre and thematic preoccupations, film will always suggest something about the period in which it was made. Crucially, film is essentially a visual medium and analysis of visual style is a key part of understanding the film itself. Film and visual material does not just present straightforward narratives in simplistic ways. Historian J.A.S. Grenville observed that film is much more than simply a collection of images, noting ‘the addition of a sound track can be made to influence the visual impact of what the camera shot. Montage or the art of film editing, can create the effects desired by the film maker.’⁴ The study of film requires an understanding of all aspects of production, reception and visual style, and this work will suggest ways in which this can be achieved.

The first chapters of this book deal with the relationship that exists between history and film, film aesthetics and form, and film historiography. Chapter 2 considers the way in which the past has been created on screen and how film material has been used as a source to explore the past. In doing so it will suggest how even the most inaccurate, fictitious and crude filmic representations can be used to examine notions of the past and how such material should be approached. Chapter 3 will consider the characteristics that are particular to film as a source, specifically a visual source. It will demonstrate how to ‘read’ a film, to examine how the visual and textual language of films has been deliberately crafted and how it can be understood and explored. Chapter 4 will explore the trends that have informed film scholarship and the way in which film has been viewed, understood and studied in different periods. This chapter will also examine how trends in historiography can be discerned within and mapped alongside trends in film scholarship.

The next few chapters will move away from the theoretical and the historical and suggest a practical approach for studying film and using it as a source. Chapter 5 will offer suggestions on how to identify achievable research questions that draw upon and relate to film sources. It will indicate how research questions can be devised, how to begin working on a topic, and how to identify a useful approach. This chapter also includes two detailed case studies. Chapter 6 will follow on from the suggestions offered in Chapters 4 and 5 and demonstrate how a topic or research area can be matched with an appropriate methodology and a critical framework. Drawing on some of the key theories and approaches identified in Chapter 3, this chapter will also show how these theories can and have been used. The examples reveal how scholars working with film have utilised different critical and methodological approaches, and demonstrate the usefulness of existing work in helping to structure, research and approach your own film-related topic.

Chapters 7 and 8 relate to the resources that can be used to help explore and understand film. Chapter 7 will offer a detailed survey of the specific kinds of resources available, where they are held and how they can be accessed. This exploration will include conventional resources such as books and academic journals, but will also contain information about primary sources, archival material and the extensive digital collections that are accessible. Chapter 8 suggests ways in which the different sources can be used. Examples here will draw upon newspaper material, account books and ledgers, personal papers and interview transcripts. The chapter will also suggest how such material can be interrogated, for example how film reviews can be read and understood, how interviews should be conducted, how to access visual or written material in an archive and the value of online fan sites. Finally, Chapter 9 offers ideas on how research can be written up, the kind of information which should be included in essays or research projects, how the analysis should be written, what tone you should adopt, how your work should be structured and the way in which material should be referenced.

The book aims to provide the tools to undertake film-related analysis. While ambitious in scope, this work cannot hope to cover everything. Detailed explorations of new media, television, amateur films and YouTube content can all be found elsewhere and will only be mentioned here where relevant. This guide is intended to be of use for film and media studies undergraduates and also for those who use film as part of advanced research who may not have studied the subject before. It will aim to provide answers to the following questions:

• How do I identify source materials?

• How can I analyse my material?

• What critical approach should I adopt?

• How do I devise a methodology?

• What are the best sources to use in film analysis?

• Do I need to visit an archive?

• How should I structure my work?

As well as offering answers to these questions, this guide also situates film-related research work within a tradition of academic scholarship and deliberately challenges outdated notions of film as an unreliable historical source. This work does not set out to reinvent the wheel; there are a large number of excellent works which address the topic of film as a historical source, including recent publications on film and history by James Chapman, Martin Pereboom and Marnie Hughes-Warrington.⁵ In addition to work which is specific to the discipline of film studies, there are also numerous useful publications which address how historians make use of moving image. Within such publications, the idea of film as a source is usually addressed, though the textual specificities of the film medium are sometimes overlooked in a desire to align film with more conventional sources. This work intends to address both issues; it will suggest how to conduct film-related research and also offer guidelines on both textual analysis and the use of supplementary evidence which extends beyond the text itself. This work refers to the work of others in appropriate detail, but in the sections where the sou...