Beginnings
The idea for this book is rooted in my engagement with students and independent filmmakers from across the world who have entrusted me with the privilege of helping them develop their stories and cinematic narratives. When working with them, recurring issues, themes and problems would appear which chimed with my own similar themes, issues and problems when creating my own cinematic work. It became clear to me that a critical aspect of the process of creating films was missing from much of the literature and the teaching and learning practices I saw around me. Particularly in light of Ben Okri’s astute observation that “[s]tories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves and you change the individual and nations” (Okri 1995, p. 21), it became clear that there was an imperative gap to be addressed. While there are many excellent books about the craft of screenwriting and filmmaking,1 almost all of these books would deal with the skills and craft of screenwriting and directing. Very few would directly attempt at venturing into the very personal experience of the creative process, the personal motivations for telling stories and build an ontological relationship to the process of developing ideas for filmmaking. Exceptions such as Vogler (2007) and Rabiger (2017) have aspects of their work which emphasise the personal experience as important sources and inspiration for the development of narrative ideas, but they tend to contextualise this very firmly within craft skills in relation to screenwriting and directing. A writer such as Lee (2013) takes a more theoretical approach to looking at the craft of screenwriting through the lens of psychology, but it reflects a quasi scientific relationship to the craft of screenwriting. It is, of course, difficult to formalise and systematise the personal into a set of craft skills that would fit into the hegemony of curricula design, or indeed research design, yet it was clear to me that there were a great many students of filmmaking, and independent filmmakers, who craved an understanding of how to marry their deeply personal feelings and motivations with that of the publicly facing craft of filmmaking.
It became clear to me that there is a gap in the literature on filmmaking practice that addresses that highly private and personal stage in the development of ideas and the early pre-screenwriting stages of the filmmaking process. This gap was particularly pronounced when thinking of this as a more mystical stage in the process of creating film ideas. When exploring these approaches with my students over the years, the response and engagement to story and narrative development was incredibly enriching for both students and myself. By combining my own on going practical experience of filmmaking and that of my students, I was able to evolve an approach to one aspect of my work I call ethnomediaology. More recently, I have been able to formalise this approach through the devising and creation of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research network project that I led between 2016 and 2018 entitled StoryLab International Film Development Research Network. Working with colleagues Dr Nico Meissner, Griffith Film School, Australia, Sarah Kuntoh, National Film and Television Institute, Ghana and Dr Carolina Patiño, University of Ibagué, Colombia, I was able to develop and implement this interdisciplinary methodological approach into our research. Inspired from music and anthropology, ethnomediaology is an interdisciplinary approach blending the methodologies inherent in ethnomusicology2 and autoethnography,3 which involves the active and immersive participation of researchers in the research culture and creative media creation process, using active personal engagement as a basis for knowledge generation, data gathering and evaluation.
For me filmmaking, film teaching and conducting film practice research have become inextricably intertwined. I started off as a filmmaker, grew into embedding my filmmaking practices into my teaching of film practice, then developed a research profile driven by my filmmaking practice and this then in turn allowed research findings to find expression in teaching and learning. As I discuss finding our voices in filmmaking in this book, I hope it will become clear that the approach I have taken is to unashamedly root the exploration in that special interface between personal experience as a filmmaker, a researcher of film practices, in particular story and narrative practices, and the teaching of film practice. Finding The Personal Voice in Filmmaking will therefore have at its heart an autoethnographic expression in part grown from previous practice research4 and the findings from the AHRC StoryLab International Film Development Research Network. 5 In keeping with the overarching theme of the book, the journey on which I hope to take you will be rooted in personal values, personal perspectives and personal motivation. My aim is, through the subjectivity of this autoethnographic journey, to introduce you to some new insights of wider significance that will hopefully be of use in your own creative exploration and expression.
The Personal Voice
The only reality I know is that which I experience myself. I smell, I touch, I hear, I taste and I see. Above all, I imagine and I feel. My whole body is involved in experiencing and through these experiences I engage with life. To speak of experiences that are not rooted in my own experiences would therefore seem false, inauthentic and, at best, distant. That authenticity is at the heart of my relationship with others and through sharing these authentic experiences I contribute to building a collective truth whose tentacles ultimately have roots in the personal experiences of us all. Building healthy societies is dependent on a web of individuals who have an honest relationship with their experience of, and engagement with, life and are able to share and bring that experience to bear on their social and cultural contexts. I am a self conscious being, aware of how I float on a lonely planet in an infinite, timeless universe. The need for meaning, purpose and the longing to return home to some original innocence are powerful forces that drive me to want to tell stories that bind us together in a whole that ultimately is more than the sum of its parts.
What is personal then becomes universal. Paradoxically, perhaps, the more personal we get in our expressions, the more universal the consequences and impact of what we reveal. When I listen to someone else telling me about their experience, I do not want to hear something impersonal, inauthentic and generic. I want to hear their story, their experience, their perspective. What engages me is that the story I am being told emanates from the depths of an individual experience, with authenticity and humility. Usual...