Recording The Senses : Playing With Perceptions. Can An Anthropologist Learn Anything From Learning To Make A Film?

Abstract Participant observation forms the bedrock of social and cultural anthropology but how good are our observations when we participate? Whilst many may consider a baptism by fire approach to fieldwork and years of subsequent reflection the best way to address these questions, I argue there are benefits to be gained through undergoing specialist pre-fieldwork training. The training method I want to champion is filmmaking or more accurately digital video-filmmaking. With few departments offering pre-fieldwork courses in filmmaking, this thesis aims to show how experience with the process, rather than the production of a film itself, can offer valuable insights into some of the issues confronting the anthropological observer in the field. It is said that the camera never lies, but the camera can lie and so can our perceptions. If our perceptions can be wrong, what does it means to observe? What does it mean to be a good observer? What is a lie? What are we doing when we construct meaning from our perceptions to write an account or tell a story? This thesis aims to explore these questions and more by looking at the equipment used to make films and the process of recording sound and vision as one might do for a documentary, ethnographic or ‘anthropological’ film and then reflecting on the subsequent creation of meaning from them as is done in the edit room. By focusing in on these processes and drawing analogies to the way we generate perception and create meaning, we can externalise, reflect and make conscious some of the qualities and problems of observation, perception and interpretation that we call experience. At the same time it provides filmmaking training allowing students to make beneficial use of modern audio-visual technologies in recording fieldwork and making films.