Children, video-making and research:

emerging questions about visual methodologies

Liesbeth de Block and Rebekah WillettCentre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media

Institute of Education, University of London

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

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

Possibilities home video

• moving image

• re-watching

• audience

• technology

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)

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

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

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’?

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’

• children’s productions do not simply ‘speak for themselves’.

videos

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,