Where do we start with telling a story? At the highlight to spark interest and come in with a BANG?
Or as I learned from The Sound Of Music 'let's start at the very be-gin-ning, it's a very good place to start'? (insert Julie Andrews voice).
Perhaps at the very end where you finish the mission, off to the new adventure and share the journey through reflections and flack backs?
Shaping my presentation makes me realise I have so much I want to share, and zero clue what is the 'best' one. So I decided to just start somewhere and see if I can keep juggling until it feels like the puzzle pieces of my journey through this course 'fit'.
How do you make these decisions? Intuition? Rationale? Would love to hear!
Cannot wait to share it with you on Tuesday!
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Internal vs external flaws
When I first looked at characters I tried to organise their flaws by internal and external flaws. If a flaw wasn't explained in the film, was not a direct cause of something I labelled it as an internal flaw. For example. In the film Black Swan you see the central character Nina steal things from the ex-principal dancer, probably because she wanted literally to have everything she had, in order to embody the principal dancer experience. Internal experience.
Or is it?
Was this flawed behaviour not the product of the highly competitive and (sometimes) destructive environment of being in a professional ballet company? Of the principal ballerina that might have ignored her many times? Of the company director that pressured her to be more like the principal? All very probable options of external factors.
But we don't see these in the film.
So I thought they came from an internal source.
But a film is a moment in time. We can't see all the external influences that cause flaws. And aren't we all a product of our environment?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Or is it?
Was this flawed behaviour not the product of the highly competitive and (sometimes) destructive environment of being in a professional ballet company? Of the principal ballerina that might have ignored her many times? Of the company director that pressured her to be more like the principal? All very probable options of external factors.
But we don't see these in the film.
So I thought they came from an internal source.
But a film is a moment in time. We can't see all the external influences that cause flaws. And aren't we all a product of our environment?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Monday, July 1, 2019
Thoughts on core text book 'Transforming Qualitative data' - Harry F. Wolcott
As I am working through the book 'Transforming Qualitative data' by Harry F. Wolcott I would like to share a few key things from this book that are really helping me at the moment and my thoughts on it. It's a massive book so hopefully these little 'nuggets of wisdom' are useful. Would love to share idea's and thoughts on them!
Page 10
Wolcott discusses the three major ways to 'do something' with descriptive data:
1. Stay close to the data as originally recorded. This may result in long excepts from fieldnotes, or reapeat informants' words so that informants themselves seem to tell their stories. --> Underlying assumption is that the data 'speak for themselves'.
2. 'Expand and extend beyond a purely descriptive account with an analysis that proceeds in some careful, systematic way to identify key factors and relationship among them'
3. Calling for interpretation. --> It does not claim to be as convincingly or compulsively 'scientific' as the 2nd. The goal is to make sense of what goes on, to reach out for understanding or explanation beyond the limits of what can be explained with the degree of certainty usually associated with analysis. --> can be starting point and culmination.
Page 44
On ways to approach interpretation;
Connect with personal experience;
-reference to I-witnessing from Geertz, 1988 pp. 73-101. --> two interpretations
1. personalize: 'this is what I make of it all'
2. 'this is how the research experience affected me'
For me this distinction was very interesting. I started to reflect on how this degree and my research is influencing my work as a filmmaker and how I am shaping my personal opinion on the research subject as I gather more data.
On analysing the interpretive process:
What seems to be holding you back? What piece of the puzzle are you still missing? 'Be aware how your analysis may reflect fashionable point of view rather than important underlying issues.'
These questions are very interesting as I move into my last interviews. What keeps me from asking certain questions? How can I change that? What do I really want to address in my next interview? How do I keep an open eye to the research at hand when my own stance becomes clearer and clearer?
Page 48:
A quote from Barbara Frankel (1987) that got mentioned and was really food for thought for me:
'While it has been trendy for some years to take sides ''for'' or ''against'' interpretive social science, no one has yet paused in the game long enough to explain how one would go about doing non-interpretive science of any sort. (p170)
Page 65:
Descriptive data need to be studied, not merely skimmed.
A good reminder to keep going over the recordings and to keep referring back to the original artefacts. My first interpretation of it might not be the only/right one. There is no right one.
Page 67:
'Overburdening readers with data seems an academic cop-out on the part of a researcher holding too tightly to the belief that data speak for themselves.'
Everyone's interpretation of data is different; this research is a way to share my interpretation through critical analysis. It's not up to the reader to analyse my data.
Page 113:
On generalisation of a case study:
'There must be a capacity for generalisation; otherwise there would be no point to giving such careful attention to the single case. The art of descriptive research, I believe, is in portraying the case at hand so well that readers themselves make the generalisations for us.'
For me a particular film is a case study. I want to keep the analysis to the film I am reviewing. Not generalise to every film. At the same time my analysis must be so careful and through that the reader (hopefully) find their own examples of other films that my analysis might apply to.
Page 407:
About preparing for qualitative data, these questions are helpful:
-If I want to shed light on this topic, I will need such-and-such data?
-What kind of data would I have to get?
This made me review my preparations and tailor some of the questions to be more specific. And others to widen the point of view to allow a variety of answers/data to shine through.
Page 10
Wolcott discusses the three major ways to 'do something' with descriptive data:
1. Stay close to the data as originally recorded. This may result in long excepts from fieldnotes, or reapeat informants' words so that informants themselves seem to tell their stories. --> Underlying assumption is that the data 'speak for themselves'.
2. 'Expand and extend beyond a purely descriptive account with an analysis that proceeds in some careful, systematic way to identify key factors and relationship among them'
3. Calling for interpretation. --> It does not claim to be as convincingly or compulsively 'scientific' as the 2nd. The goal is to make sense of what goes on, to reach out for understanding or explanation beyond the limits of what can be explained with the degree of certainty usually associated with analysis. --> can be starting point and culmination.
Page 44
On ways to approach interpretation;
Connect with personal experience;
-reference to I-witnessing from Geertz, 1988 pp. 73-101. --> two interpretations
1. personalize: 'this is what I make of it all'
2. 'this is how the research experience affected me'
For me this distinction was very interesting. I started to reflect on how this degree and my research is influencing my work as a filmmaker and how I am shaping my personal opinion on the research subject as I gather more data.
On analysing the interpretive process:
What seems to be holding you back? What piece of the puzzle are you still missing? 'Be aware how your analysis may reflect fashionable point of view rather than important underlying issues.'
These questions are very interesting as I move into my last interviews. What keeps me from asking certain questions? How can I change that? What do I really want to address in my next interview? How do I keep an open eye to the research at hand when my own stance becomes clearer and clearer?
Page 48:
A quote from Barbara Frankel (1987) that got mentioned and was really food for thought for me:
'While it has been trendy for some years to take sides ''for'' or ''against'' interpretive social science, no one has yet paused in the game long enough to explain how one would go about doing non-interpretive science of any sort. (p170)
Page 65:
Descriptive data need to be studied, not merely skimmed.
A good reminder to keep going over the recordings and to keep referring back to the original artefacts. My first interpretation of it might not be the only/right one. There is no right one.
Page 67:
'Overburdening readers with data seems an academic cop-out on the part of a researcher holding too tightly to the belief that data speak for themselves.'
Everyone's interpretation of data is different; this research is a way to share my interpretation through critical analysis. It's not up to the reader to analyse my data.
Page 113:
On generalisation of a case study:
'There must be a capacity for generalisation; otherwise there would be no point to giving such careful attention to the single case. The art of descriptive research, I believe, is in portraying the case at hand so well that readers themselves make the generalisations for us.'
For me a particular film is a case study. I want to keep the analysis to the film I am reviewing. Not generalise to every film. At the same time my analysis must be so careful and through that the reader (hopefully) find their own examples of other films that my analysis might apply to.
Page 407:
About preparing for qualitative data, these questions are helpful:
-If I want to shed light on this topic, I will need such-and-such data?
-What kind of data would I have to get?
This made me review my preparations and tailor some of the questions to be more specific. And others to widen the point of view to allow a variety of answers/data to shine through.
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