Drawing on over ten years of experience teaching in the MFA Program in Documentary Media at Toronto Metropolitan University, I will try to address the complex reality of doing research-creation within the academy for the emerging documentary filmmakers in the program.[1] The main premise of this paper is that documentary film and research-creation are very similar because, as a rule, research is at the heart of every documentary project: the essence of a documentary project is that it begins in critical observation and analysis and ends in story. Like academic research every documentary (student) project usually begins as an idea, a hypothesis, or a series of questions: its beginnings are in research, and the critical thinking therein. But this is not a given, or the same, for every student.

A particular challenge in our MFA program is to bridge the gap between students who are trained as artists (or crafts people) and students who come to the program with a background in the social sciences or the humanities. Those trained as artists struggle with the research and more academic requirements, while students trained with an academic background struggle with the more creative and artistic components of the filmmaking process. This has become clear from the specific graduation requirements in our program that students must produce both a creative project (generally a 30-minute documentary film) and a substantial “support paper” (8,000-11,000 words) that is a combination of an academic research paper or a thesis (a common requirement in MA programs), and a (usually much shorter) artist statement (a common requirement in MFA programs). Below I will present a few of the pedagogical and creative solutions I have developed in response, such as constant peer support and peer review in class, and to analyse existing Major Research Papers (MRP) with the students as one of the exercises in their project development course.

Teaching Documentary as Research-Creation

In our MFA Program we work from the assumption that every documentary (student) project is grounded in research and critical thinking: it begins in analysis and ends in story. A major pillar in our curriculum is therefore that the first Masters Project Development course is closely tied to a course in Documentary Research Methods. These courses not only run in parallel, but there are also two critical moments where the students must perform for both at the same time: at the time of their pitches mid-course, and for a presentation of their completed project ideas at the end of the first year. It is through the marriage of these two courses that students learn about how to do practice-based research (in an academic context), which is better known as “research-creation” in Canada.

As defined by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the term research-creation refers to “an approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms).”[2] Consequently, students need to address clear research questions, offer a theoretical contextualization for their work within relevant fields of inquiry, and present a well-considered and documented methodological approach and creative process. In other words, their projects need to meet both academic expectations and the standards of artistic rigour that were specifically developed for documentary filmmaking.

The academic expectation is that the student can provide a theoretical consideration in textual form in the MRP, in which the student actively reflects, intellectually and critically, on the project by situating the work in its relevant disciplinary and cultural contexts. This written academic reflection demonstrates that the student can address the appropriate historical, theoretical, and disciplinary concerns. While it is generally accepted that research-creation is more attuned to processes than to the communication of outputs or products, the student still needs to critically reflect on their process during the making of the project, which is a difficult task for most students. Therefore, we have divided the support paper into three parts.

The first section of the MRP which they write early on focuses on the description of the subject of the documentary film, basically answering the question “What is the project about?” Students need to address relevant questions such as: What is the social, historical, geographical context of the project? What is the social, political, or cultural relevance of the project? What are the main issues at stake and what are minor or related issues? But also: are there main characters in the project? If so, who are they, and why are they central?

The second section of the MRP is the methodology: this is where students must answer the question: “How did you make the film?” They describe the entire process from development to final cut, explain the choices they made, various techniques and methods they used (good and bad ones), and this at various stages of their research-creation project. We ask that this be supported by academic sources about the method(s) they chose, that they compare their methods to existing documentary films or styles, and that they explain what it is that they did differently and why. While this is supposed to be a more analytical part of the paper, we also accept a more hands-on description of how they made the film technically speaking, simply giving a record of what worked and what did not in the making of the film. Since this part can only be done once the film is made, or at least when it is fully designed and completely identifiable in terms of which documentary style and methods were used, they usually write this part last.

The third part of the MRP is about the documentary relevance of the project. Here students are asked to answer the question: “How does the project address or challenge documentary concerns?” This is the contextualizing part of the support paper and closest to documentary studies. We ask students to identify which concepts from documentary theory are applicable to their project, in what way, and to what extent. We also ask what their main sources or points of reference are, or how their project is related to other documentary works, which in turn they are asked to identify and examine closely. Here they also need to define their work as documentary, for example by determining the different elements in their work, and to which documentary style or genre these belong.

What we ask from our students is no easy undertaking. They have to be good film scholars and good filmmakers at the same time. This while both fields require very different qualities and training. We expect that their work can be situated as a legitimate part of academic practice, while also producing new creative work that is not just art-for-art’s-sake. The part that makes all this possible, more so than what happens in typical MFA programs, is that our program is about documentary media: more than in fiction and experimental film (which are part of regular film production MFA programs), documentary film as a practice already combines exploration and research in conjunction with production. It is not a big stretch for documentary filmmakers to see their creative production as a means to reflect upon and diffuse knowledge, to document what they discover in the process and reflect on their own methodology and ethics.

Pedagogical Challenges and Solutions

A major part of doing documentary film as research-creation in our program is to help the students define the best form and style for the content of their films, but also for themselves as artists: to find their own artistic voice. This is particularly a challenge for students who are only familiar with mainstream and broadcast films (TV formats), and they may fall into the trap of just following common trends and use cliches. One of the ways we address questions of originality and creativity in our program is through constant peer review in class, by giving students a chance to compare and comment on each other’s work and contribute examples of films they have seen (which enlarges the pool of examples tremendously than if it were only the instructor giving examples). Students do this at all stages of their productions, and throughout the four courses that are entirely dedicated to the making of their projects: two production development courses in first year, and two project production courses in second year.

First, students have to pitch their ideas in the second semester of the program. They then argue and present their ideas once these are further developed in pre-production and even make proof-of-concept videos; later they share the different possibilities, difficulties and issues related to their projects encountered during production and discuss changes at stake (which there are constantly during the making of documentaries); and finally, they share the narrative structure they develop for the film in post-production until they have a final cut. Each time a student presents their work, all other students, as well as the instructor, contribute to the critical discussion of the work in question, and (can) offer their creative ideas and/or solutions. Consequently, most of our project development or project production classes operate more as active and collective brainstorming sessions where everyone has a shared interest in the successful creation and completion of original works.

A recurrent issue when students try to define their own work or situate it in the larger canon of documentary film is the tendency to apply partial or biased knowledge. Granted, it is not possible to learn the complete history of documentary film and to familiarize yourself with the entire field of documentary studies in only two years, while also making a 30-minute film all by yourself. But when students only stay within the confines of what they saw and read for their documentary history courses, and do not explore work and readings outside the curriculum, or other than what was advised to them by their supervisors, they risk missing out on knowing films that might be more suitable to properly contextualize their work.

Complicating things even more, very much in tune with the times, is that much of the work in our program tends to be personal in nature. This is by definition hard to classify, let alone when most students are still developing and discovering their own artistic voice and lack the reflexive skills to analyse and describe this aspect of their work(s). Developing an artistic voice poses some challenges that are specific to making documentary work, particularly within a learning environment. As Rabinger and Hermann state, “this profound and enduring aspect (the artistic voice) of a person’s identity is not something you can directly articulate or apply to your work, because it arises from your formative experiences, abiding interests, and inherent nature—none of these you chose or consciously control. You can never liberate your values, exercise your beliefs, and work to identify your deeper reactions and instincts.”[3] It is exactly this more unconscious and uncertain (as it is still developing) aspect of the students’ identity that at times makes for difficult debates in class. For example, when personalities, beliefs, or values clash, when unconscious biases come to the fore, or when students who are making a personal documentary film get entangled in their own personality struggle(s), an issue that with the current emphasis on identity politics inside and outside of the classroom has only become more noticeable.

Which brings me to the issue of working with students with very different backgrounds, including the researchers and the creators, the thinkers and the doers, and with very different levels of prior documentary-making experience when they enter our program. To bridge this gap, we introduced an exercise in first year that has proven to help get everyone more on equal footing: the reading and analysis of an existing (and successfully defended) MRP by former students. Students are asked to select a project from a list of recent MFA graduates with the aim to examine the creative process behind the work, as well as how its final form and content serve the project’s idea. Again, research-creation and what it stands for are central here: students must identify the key components of the project in terms of its overall structure and effectiveness in supporting the central research question. Other elements they are asked to address are the originality of the project, presentation considerations, and the intellectual scope of the project. Ultimately, the aim of this exercise is to get a better understanding of how the requirements for a documentary project produced within an MFA program differ (if at all) from commercial or independent documentary production and exhibition. For the students, this is a first glimpse into doing documentary film as research-creation and facing the challenges and possibilities that come with it.

Conclusion

Our MFA Program in Documentary Media is both original and complex due to its structure, the demanding final requirements (a mix of MA and MFA criteria), and the mixing of students with very different backgrounds, levels of experience, and even different choices of medium (photography, video installation, film etc.). Especially the mandatory substantial MRP support paper that contextualizes their work and in which students critically analyse their own projects, as any research-creation project would require, poses a challenge for many of our students. We therefore have developed a model of teaching grounded in research-creation supported by continuous peer-review, particularly for the four courses designed to help the students to develop and produce their MRPs, and to think critically about their own work. Earlier in the program, an exercise that involves the viewing and reading and critical analysis of an existing MRP helps the students to imagine the different possibilities of artistic and theoretical complexity, innovation, and style for their own MRPs. We encourage them to think outside the box and to come up with a project and a style that is true to them as budding artists, while helping to redefine and expand the definition of documentary film. Although many parts of the assignments are inspired by what we typically do in film, such as doing a pitch or writing a film treatment, it is from doing this in dialogue with their colleagues working in other media such as photography and video installation, that the filmmakers also learn to see these typical film assignments, as a chance to rethink standard methods and techniques from the mainstream film industry, and adjust these in ways that will be useful when they want to apply for research-creation grants from SSHRC or for research grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. As such, we try to help our documentary film students develop both a broader identity as artists and be more versatile as researchers.

Gerda Cammaer is Associate Professor in the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Her main research interests are experimental and documentary film. She is also active in CILECT, the International Organization of Cinema, Audiovisual and Media Schools.

1. At Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), the MFA Program in Documentary Media is actually a multidisciplinary program that is open to photographers, video artists, and digital artists, in addition to filmmakers. Noteworthy is that the group of students choosing to make a film as their final project is usually the largest. This article is written considering mostly the filmmakers in the program. For a glimpse at some of the work produced in our program, see: https://www.ryerson.ca/documentarymedia/showcase/ ↑

2. https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/definitions-eng.aspx#a22. They also define an “artist-researcher” as follows: “An individual whose work involves research and the creation of works of art.”  ↑

3. Michael Rabinger, and Courtney Hermann, Directing the Documentary (7^th Edition) (Walton: Focal Press, 2020), 27. ↑