Impact and Documentary Filmmaking: Ethical Reflections On A Practice Based Study

Abstract

In this exegesis I examine my creative project, a series of seven short documentary films entitled The Ripple Effect of PTSD (Melzer 2016a), and its impact on community, on the film participants, and on me as a filmmaker. The films document the experience of caregivers and family members of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The exegesis is framed by the literature on ethics and documentary film. In the first data chapter, I detail the work of building a community for my films, engaging with impact partners and producing a series of educational videos about PTSD. Also catalogued in this chapter is the success of the films. They were selected for film festivals, elicited positive feedback from the general public and were shared multiple times online. The following chapter discusses the impact of the creative project on the participants, highlighting their agency and empowerment as well as vulnerabilities. The discussion reveals the complex and multifaceted nature of power in documentary filmmaking. From impact on participants I move to consider the impact of the filmmaking process on me as a filmmaker drawing on the notions of ‘vicarious trauma’ and ‘emotion work/emotional labour’. I demonstrate that the fraught subject matter of the films, the distress of participants, and my novice status as a filmmaker exposed me to vicarious trauma. I further explain how different aspects of the filmmaking process, such as accessing and interviewing participants, and negotiating with the military, necessitated significant emotional labour. In the concluding chapter of the exegesis I highlight the key findings of research. Of particular importance is my illumination of the emotional dimensions of film production. I argue that quality documentary production requires significant emotional labour on behalf of a filmmaker, but the implications of this emotion work are rarely acknowledged in the literature. As such, I argue for the importance of expanding documentary filmmaking and ethics research to include a focus on the emotional health and wellbeing of the filmmaker.