Children, video-making and research: emerging questions about visual methodologies Liesbeth de Block and Rebekah Willett Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media Institute of Education, University of London

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Children, video-making and research emerging
questions about visual methodologiesLiesbeth de
Block and Rebekah WillettCentre for the Study of
Children, Youth and MediaInstitute of Education,
University of London
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Camcorder cultures Media technology and everyday
creativity

• AHRC-funded project, 2005 - 2008, David
  Buckingham and Maria Pini
• domestic use
• learning
• cultures and contexts
• creativity
• Surveys, interviews, case studies

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Domestic visuals as cultural objects and
constructions

• Richard Chalfen(1987) Snapshot Versions of Life
• Documentation - visual history
• Memory - triggering of the memory, hedonistic
  function
• Cultural memberships - display of proper and
  expected behaviour

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Possibilities home video

• moving image
• re-watching
• audience
• technology

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Spoof videos, masculinity and friendships

• 120 spoofs from 68 different producers - young
  white men, only 2 young women
• Humour
• Negotiation cool achievers
• Play and power (Winnicott)

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Children in Communicationabout Migration
(www.chicam.org)

• EU funded
• 7 partners - 3 years
• Research themes
• education, family, friendship, visual
  communication
• Focus refugee children 10-14
• Media clubs, intranet
• Researchers and media educator

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Video as participation

• during research process
• A focus for the negotiation of understanding
  between researched and researcher
• before, during, after
• Allows children to guide the research direction
• BUT
• We set the boundaries club, themes,
  skills/equipment
• Their work comes out of their media experience

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Video as voice

• For participation in the public sphere
• Part of a long tradition of marginalised voices
  in documentary and activist media?
• Grierson (1946) the creative treatment of
  reality
• Who is the audience?
• What are their speaking positions?
• What are the confines within which they can
  speak?

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What is the video?

• Pink (2004) video as a subjective text made in
  collaboration with the researcher
• as a technology that participates in the
  negotiation of social relationships
• video representation
• childrens productions do not simply speak for
  themselves.

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videos
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Analysing visuals - accounting for practices and
texts

• Context of production - place, social context,
  purpose and motivation, technology,people/social
  relationships
• Construction - film grammar, sound, editing,
  legibility,presentation
• Content - representation, genre, narrative
• Reception - who, where, how, when, why,