Field Reports

Supervisory Group meeting (18-24 January): Prior to the field report, arrange a meeting with the other student members of your “soup group” to share experiences, get feedback, and brainstorm responses to the field reports.

Written Reflections: First impressions from the field (500-800 words)

• To what extent does your first contact with the field site confirm the feasibility and relevance of your proposal? And to what extent does it challenge them?
• Do these circumstances require a rephrasing of your research-question and/or an adjustment of your methodological approach? How so?
• Describe one incident that struck you as surprising or significant in some way. Try to write in a descriptively ‘thick’ manner.
• Describe one person who will potentially be a protagonist in your film or multimodal output. Try to give the person a sense of fullness in your description.

Logging Data: Begin to organize the different media into loglists according to: Themes, Events, Content, etc. Referring to Laura Ogden’s logging method described in the handouts in Field Preparations, begin to develop your own footage organization system. Think about the following questions as you do this:

• What question does the footage answer/address?
• To which concepts does the footage relate?
• What is the quality of the AV material?
• What role could it have in the final project?

Send an overview of your recorded materials that include:

• the quantitative metadata of all relevant media records (name, date and time created, clip length),
• a qualitative log of each clip with details (content, names of key subjects, locations, events, topics, etc.), and
• the paradata on how you collected the data (mode, equipment, method, etc.).

Multimodal Materials: First impressions in audiovisual examples

• Submit 10-12 still images (photographic, drawing, mapping) that give an idea of the location(s) where you are working and the people with whom you are working.
• Submit 2 unedited video sequences (2-4 minutes each) that exemplify your style of filming and mode of engaging people. If you do not have access to an appropriate internet connection, then substitute with series of still frames and compress as necessary.
• Submit 1 sound sequence (2-4 minutes) that gives a sense of place for one of your main locations.

Supervisory Group meeting (8-14 February): Prior to the field report, arrange a meeting with the other student members of your “soup group” to share experiences, get feedback, and brainstorm responses to the field reports.

Written Reflections: First impressions from the field (500-800 words)

• What protagonists, themes, topics, and narratives for the project have emerged so far?
• What are the main concepts that now seem most relevant? Do you need to consider adding new concepts? How are these exemplified in your video footage and other data?
• What have you done that worked very well and/or that did not work at all? What changes (if any) do you intend to make to your project and research plan as a consequence?

Logging Data: Send an overview of your recorded materials and field journal.

• Provide an update of your continued efforts to create a media loglist building on your efforts in Field Report 1.
• Provide an initial index of your field journal organized by date and/or page. Here you should read through your journal and may notations on key terms (names, locations, events, concepts, themes, etc.) and indicate on which dates these get mentioned. These should align with the conventions you use in your media loglists.
  • For example: Protagonist A — January: 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 24, 31; February: 1, 4, 5, 9

Multimodal Materials: First impressions in audiovisual examples

• Submit 10-12 still images that give an impression of your main themes, topics, and concepts.
• Submit 2 video sequences (2-4 minutes each) that illustrate one or more of the points covered in your written report.
• Submit 1-2 sound sequences (2-4 minutes each) that give a sense of the soundscape and/or communicative context.

Supervisory Group meeting (1-7 March): Prior to the field report, arrange a meeting with the other student members of your “soup group” to share experiences, get feedback, and brainstorm responses to the field reports.

Preliminary analysis / conclusions: Provide an initial analysis of your main findings (2000 words)

Revisit the questions asked in Field Report 2 and consider whether your answers are still the same as they were three weeks ago. Reflect on these questions:

• What patterns do you now see in the phenomena you have been exploring?
• What issues, people, and places do you want to elaborate with your remaining time?
• What new areas have emerged which you still want to investigate before you leave the field?
• Based on the data you’ve recorded,
  • Does this material provide sufficient coverage of your key questions/concepts?
  • Does it begin to tell a story? If so, what story? What additional materials do you need to elaborate this story?
  • Do you have everything you need to structure your footage into a linear film or other output with a beginning, middle, and end?

Logging Data: Send an update of your continued efforts to create a media loglist and field journal TOC/Index. This should give a nearly complete overview of your entire collection of research materials. Calculate how many hours of rushes you have.

Multimodal Materials: First impressions in audiovisual examples

• Submit 10-12 still images that provide a survey of key element (i.e., a photo-survey) or narrative structure to your project (i.e., a photo-essay).
• Submit 2 video sequences (2-4 minutes each) that illustrate at least 3 different moments that could play a significant/structural role in your coming project.
• Submit 1-2 sound sequences (2-4 minutes each) that provides significant knowledge about your project.

Logging: During the week of 15-19 March, the student should transition to full-time work on organizing and logging all their data. You should aim to have a comprehensive loglist and index before the Organizing, Analysis, & Editing workshop begins. If you have excessive footage (>30 hours), this may take additional time. As you proceed, you’ll want to elaborate your loglist to include useful qualitative data that helps you organize and operationalize it.

Media files: Transfer the media files of your selected 10 hours to a designated hard drive from which you are actively working. If you have not done this already, all your files should have been batch renamed and archived to a pristine hard drive that you do not touch. You should then duplicate this to a second hard drive. This may serve as your active source drive or you may wish to use a third drive for this day-to-day activity and use your second drive as an intermediary. As you work on your Adobe Premiere project, you should regularly back up your project files to your computer and/or the cloud or another hard drive. These project files are not very large, but retain all the important decisions you’ve made, like the in and out points. You want to make sure that you always have at least two versions of every file (media source files and project files).

Loglist Pre-selection: In order to prepare for the final chapter of this phase in Organizing, Analysis, & Editing, you will need to make an initial selection of your footage (including all forms of AV data). This process requires you to closely coordinate between your Media Loglist and the contents of your footage. Follow these steps:

1. Update your Media Loglist to provide a comprehensive overview of your materials.
2. Review this list for the materials you think are most significant. You may want to create a rating system to rank your materials.
3. Make 10-hour pre-selection (video, audio, photo) from this priority list that encompasses a broad spectrum of your project.
4. Email the complete loglist to your supervisor with the 10-hour pre-selection clearly indicated.