This episode features a Read & Record of Liz Miller and Martin Allor’s 2016 essay “Choreographies of collaboration: Social engagement in interactive documentaries”, from Volume 10, Issue 1 of the journal ‘Studies in Documentary Film’ (Taylor & Francis).
In this text, the authors engage in a series of in-depth conversations with socially engaged Canadian directors, producers and distribution strategists, in order to analyze new opportunities for using interactive non-linear documentary in order to practice interventions towards social change.
“We spoke to the directors, producers and outreach strategists of three high-profile socially engaged Canadian web documentary projects to better understand how they were adapting their methods to navigate what scholar and practitioner Meg McLagan calls the media complex, where media moves across multiple platforms and is remediated and reframed along the way (2012, p. 305). Within this complex, impact does not culminate around a single text, but through a series of primary and secondary texts including articles, tweets, radio shows, community call outs, curated conversations, campaigns and more. Within this constantly shifting media complex, users have diverse interpretive frameworks and expectations around their ability to participate with, contribute to, or share with others. Makers and users are also convening in an increasingly crowded and busy mediasphere. As a result, directors must shift their expectations and create media and infrastructures that take into account limited attention spans as well as multiple layers of engagement” (Miller & Allor, 2016, p. 54).
This article was recorded with permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com. The article “Choreographies of collaboration: Social engagement in interactive documentaries” can be accessed in Studies in Documentary Film (Taylor & Francis) at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17503280.2016.1171686.
Reference: Miller, Liz & Allor, Martin. “Choreographies of collaboration: social engagement in interactive documentaries.” Studies in Documentary Film, 10:1 (2015), pp. 53-70. DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2016.1171686.