Four colleagues and I, who have all recently completed our doctorates involving the production of a film, have got together to compare our experiences. We decided to write about our PhDs/DCAs in relation to:
- Creative works: genres, length and formats
- Exegesis: purpose and rational
- Methodologies: reflective practice strategies and approaches
- Theoretical approaches: Genre-centred, practitioner-led or creativity-based.
- Generating new knowledge: identifying the heart of the research
- PhD Research publications: peer reviewed research outcomes
Narrating Place is an international creative collaboration where about twenty people made a series of 45 second videos about their experience of a particular place. The resulting videos can be found here.
I completed my PhD earlier this year and, since then, have been giving a lot of thought to what I should do now. My doctorate involved the production of a feature-length drama and the writing of a 40,000 word exegesis. A big project but, as various people have reminded me, finishing a PhD is the start of a process, not the end of one. For better or worse, I’m now regarded by the academic community as a qualified researcher in my discipline. There is a concern, I think, that the discipline of screen production risks being marginalised within the higher education sector if it is seen as being no more than a teaching field. However, that means it needs to develop as a research discipline, and that means there needs to be a viable post-doctoral path for filmmakers who wish to develop their creative practice and have it considered as research. It’s not clear to me whether such a path exists at the moment.