Producing Personal Documentary as Ethnographic Text

Rupprecht, Michelle Christine

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Producing Personal Documentary as Ethnographic Text Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://test-scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/nc580n62z

Abstract

This thesis acts as a companion to my capstone film, 817 (2020), a personal documentary about my final years as an undergraduate student as experienced with my college cohort. My film exploits the filmmaker-subject relationship and the intrusive act of filming as a means of presenting personal circumstances situated within the larger conceptions of college culture. This essay describes the process of how my film came to be, including a mid-production research process I call reverse research. Screening various edits of this project led me to realize a gap between my intent and the perceptions of my audience. My film is situated in youth culture and college culture; this identification drove my research only after I began the production process. My reverse research led me to discover a lack of empathy in traditional academic approaches to understanding college culture. In addition to discovering new theories and films, I also address theories I knew before this reverse research process that shaped my initial creative approach to 817. The contrasting approaches of sociologists and anthropologists led me to explore the anthropological realm. This led my research into a question of ethnographic authority and what is required to produce ethnographic film. Furthermore, I examine the conflicts of autoethnography and the insider status and access of an ethnographic filmmaker. Finally, I explored the genre of personal documentary as and fictional films depicting generational youth and their aspirations, college related or not. This led me to consider methodological approaches to documentary and the notion of what I define as the film reality which is the idea that recording an action with a camera inherently creates a new reality. This thesis is a creative mediation about intergenerational empathy, ethnographic authority and the specificity of youth and college culture experience during the years 2018-2020.

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