Creative Practice Research Research Articles

Electroacoustic moviemaking: a creative media practice research collaboration case study

ABSTRACTElectroacoustic music composer Tim Howle, Professor of Contemporary Music at the University of Kent and academic and filmmaker Dr. Nick Cope, have been engaged in an ongoing creative practice collaboration since 2002.The collaboration has seen the production of a series of short films exploring notions of what it means to compose with sound and moving image in works where the sonic and visual are treated as commensurate partners. This work has been selected for festivals, conferences, concerts, installations and screenings internationally; published on DVD and through online audio-visual journals; and resulted in a number of papers, journal articles and a PhD addressing the working practices and research contexts of the collaborative output.The collaboration is both cross-disciplinary and inter-departmental in nature and gives rise to much that can be reflected on with regards to creative media practice based research in the academy. This paper addresses the challenges, opportunities and contexts the collaboration has engaged in with a particular emphasis on the research components of the work, and how these have developed and continue, as a case study of creative practice research. It will look at the different disciplinary contexts the work has arisen from and how that has both helped the work in finding audiences and outlets, research outcomes, and to navigate and address departmental and institutional research frameworks, requirements and limitations.

Creative practice research in filmmaking and screen production

This issue interrogates understandings of creative practice in screen production research within the framework of a broad range of activities that includes production and distribution of feature fi...

Practitioner centred methodological approaches to creative media practice research

ABSTRACTPractitioner-based enquiry (PBE) has been successfully applied as a research methodology to media production projects for undergraduates, honours and doctoral researchers at the University of Newcastle, Australia. PBE incorporates reflective practitioner approaches and extends ethnographic methods by offering a methodology that investigates the subjective experiential perspective of the practitioner-as-researcher. A collective review of these research projects illustrates the robustness of this approach by drawing out similar research findings that point convincingly towards creativity being described as a practice, a process and a system that is internalised by a practitioner.

Headset attentional synchrony: tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality

ABSTRACTEyetracking studies of traditional movies have shown that although viewers are free to look at any part of a film or television clip, the gaze behaviours of viewers predominantly cluster around predictable features. This phenomenon is called attentional synchrony. Virtual Reality (VR) hype promises viewers to choose their own viewpoint on scenes regardless of directorial intention. This article is the first scholarly work to examine attentional synchrony in the so-called Cinematic VR. The study uses a hybrid creative-practice research model to test the extent to which attentional synchrony is achieved in two VR productions. The videos present the same dramatic narrative from two optical and narrative viewpoints: a ‘first person’ point of view and a ‘third person’ perspective. After testing on audiences using VR headsets, the results of the research show that attentional synchrony was achieved in both productions. The result is slightly stronger in the first person point of view production, and the expected difficulty of the increased editing pace in the third person point of view did not result in substantially lower levels of attentional synchrony. The article discusses practical and theoretical considerations of editing 360-degree VR in order to synthesise industry heuristics with testable hypotheses.

A vacuous screenplay in search of rigour

A university professor with a reputation for creative practice research finds himself at a crossroads when, en route to an international conference, he meets a younger and somewhat modest dementia researcher whose work is clearly having an impact on people’s lives. A keynote at a creative writing conference in Hawaii, the professor is impelled to reflect on his own research practice and piece together fragments of his work history to reassure himself that what he does is not only valid as research, but also that it has rigour. With flashbacks to a variety of painful and often comic encounters with colleagues trying to articulate their practice as research, he is able to overcome his midflight, mid-career crisis and come to a renewed and satisfactory understanding of what good creative practice research is, and how that can be articulated clearly and confidently to others. Originally performed at the University of Southern Queensland’s inaugural ‘Scriptwriting as Research’ symposium in 2016, A Vacuous Screenplay in Search of Rigour thus interrogates not only the very mode of creative practice research, but also the broader (and varied) institutional research cultures within which it operates.

Creative Practice as Research: Discourse on Methodology

In recent years artistic practice has developed into a major focus of research activity, both as process and product, and discourse in various disciplines have made a strong case for its validity as a method of studying art and the practice of art. This paper presents a methodological approach to creative practice as research, and includes an overview of the different types of practice-related research currently undertaken across a variety of disciplines; discussion of the purposes and applications of creative practice research; and the Practitioner Model of Creative Cognition sample methodology I developed through my own creative practice research. The online version of this paper is a living discussion of practice-based methodologies in creative practice research, included as part of the special issue The Disrupted Journal of Media Practice, and invites reader contributions and discussion for future revisions.

PRACTICEOPOLIS: From an Imaginary City to a Graphic Novel

This essay is about a graphic novel produced as the culmination of a creative practice research project. It dramatizes real-life exchanges from project management meetings held during a live architectural project in the United Kingdom, repositioning those exchanges in an imaginary city as high-stakes public debates. The graphic novel depicts these discussions as value conflicts in order to examine the ideologies at work among architects and other actors in the construction industry. The research represents a special creative space that challenges design research practices to create new strategies and methods for design as scholarship.

Indigenous creative practice research: between convention and creativity

ABSTRACTThis article addresses some critical issues in the research environment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates at Australian universities. It will be useful to non-Indigenous supervisors of Indigenous students, as well as Indigenous students considering the different kinds of creative practice projects possible at postgraduate level. The article examines the nexus between Indigenous knowledge and creative practice research. The significance of this relationship becomes more apparent with increasing participation of Indigenous creative practitioners in postgraduate education. By drawing on our experience as supervisors of PhD- and MA-level higher degrees with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates, we discuss some of the issues that may arise for supervisors and Indigenous researchers in creative practice research environments. Through Indigenous candidates’ creative projects, we argue these works provide insights into the existing conventions of practice, knowledge and research in Western education. Thus, we demonstrate how Indigenous knowledge has contributed to creative practice research, and broadened its horizons and methods of inquiry.

Talking Architecture: Exploring knowledge production through conversation in architectural creative practice research

This paper will discuss the field of Architectural Creative Practice Research (ACPR) with a view to understanding what architects actually do in practice and how what they do may be translated into creative practice research. It argues that, since it is an entrepreneurial profession, a lot of what architects do is talk, but that we do not usually think of talking as a design skill or research method. However, talking about architecture is not just words. Not only can it can inform the production of built form, it can allow for nuanced and diverse views of practice to be shared and developed. This paper will argue that talking about architecture (and not simply drawing it or writing about it) can help us to develop greater understandings of both the role of the architect in practice and the diverse opportunities that an architectural response to creative practice research may provide.

The stories of supervision: creative writing in a critical space

ABSTRACTSupervising PhD candidates is a story in itself. Like a novel or screenplay, there are protagonists and antagonists, emotional transformations, dramatic twists and turns, and nearly always rising tension – especially in the domain of creative practice, where methodologies and research artefacts are still debated and contested. Voiceover narration comes into play, too, from both the candidate (‘Does my supervisor know what I'm trying to do?’) and the supervisor (‘Does my candidate really think this is research?’). And hopefully there is always a happy ending – or at least happy subject to minor revisions. There is a growing body of literature about PhD supervision. Here we seek to expand on this work by drawing specific attention to the supervision of the Creative Writing PhD in the contemporary academy in the Australian and British contexts, and in a form that befits this vibrant research discipline. In this paper, then, we make connections between theory and practice by presenting a series of fictionalised vignettes drawn from our collective experiences of supervising candidates. By being playful ourselves, we offer a creative-critical exploration of the creative practice research space that illuminates some of the challenges and opportunities for supervising in the discipline.

Noirscapes: Using the screen to rewrite Los Angeles noir as urban historiography

Abstract Noirscapes is a transmedia experience, and the cameras are rolling. Writing its own version of Los Angeles’ history, Noirscapes is a filmed scholarly discourse that literally drives through the urban environment of the city of Los Angeles constructing a noir historiography. The authors of this article are film-makerresearchers who, as a mode of creative practice research, are using screens and the medium of film to write with, on and for the screen. The premise of Noirscapes is that film noir can function partly as a surrogate history of Los Angeles, so that film noir screens provide written cinematic evidence of the city’s actual as well as imagined history. Noirscapes presents a series of short films that constitute a creative practice research output. Filming and driving across the freeways and boulevards of present day Los Angeles allowed the film-makers to traverse production locations and to discuss their role in urban historiography, as featured through iconic film noirs like Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Chinatown (1974). Noirscapes demonstrates how film-making and spectatorship can be used as complementary research methods that enquire with, on and for the screen.

Thinking through the screenplay: The academy as a site for research-based script development

Abstract Script development is a creative, commercial and social process in which ideas, emotions, people and personalities combine, cohere, clash and are contested by the practicalities, policies and rapid movements of the screen industry. It is an activity often controlled by hierarchical and financial powers, yet experienced by individual and usually sensitive practitioners trying to tell their stories to an outside world. Script development is a highly exciting yet potentially very daunting aspect of screen production and in recent times has crept into the university, with academics and academics-in-training developing screenplays for research projects and degrees. In this article we discuss and provide examples of the academy as a site for researchbased script development, an activity that draws on creative practice research methodologies to find ways of conceiving and executing screenwriting differently. By taking away the commercial constraints of the industry and instead incubating ideas in a research environment, we consider the potential of the screenwriter to use the academy as a space in which their practice can be broadened, deepened, expanded and experimented with. While this practice might sit outside of the industry while in process, we see its results as having the future potential to be used in – or at least valued by – that very industry. As creators, writers, storyliners and script editors of a range of screen works across a range of industry settings, we draw here on our collective screenwriting practice experiences within the academy to focus on the notion of thinking through the screenplay – using research to underpin creative practice, resulting in what we might call an ‘academic screenplay’ – as a way of writing differently for the screen.

Still a burning issue: measuring screen production research

ABSTRACTValuing the production of screen works as research in the academy has become an urgent matter of research and scholarly equity facing the Australian screen production sector. Made up of filmmaker-academics this sector is collectively speaking out about a number of burning issues as evidenced in this article which deeply affect the kinds of scholarship and research enabled in the tertiary space. Representing the collective voices of a significant sample of Australian filmmaker-academics, this article offers some shared perspectives on the assessment of screen works by tertiary institutions created through creative practice research. Understanding what is occurring in the sector includes a deeper examination of three issues. The first issue arises from the Australian federal government metrics, used to classify research products such as films and screen works, called Excellence in Research for Australia and the Higher Education Research Data Collection. These two productivity metrics are disconnected when assessing films and screen works. The second issue is the development of criteria for valuing film and screen works as research, and the third issue relates to filmmaker-academic workload, as assessed by Australian institutions. When combined these issues present screen production academics with an overarching question – how are the production of screen works assessed and measured in and by tertiary institutions?

Screenwriting and the higher degree by research: writing a screenplay for a creative practice PhD

ABSTRACTBy approaching different aspects of screenwriting and its place in the growing field of creative practice research, this paper reflects on our experiences of undertaking PhDs by creative project. We acknowledge the challenges that come with any creative practice research degree, such as generating new knowledge in ways not always easily measured by more traditional rubrics, and are especially interested in the added complexities that arise with screenwriting, a practice with fewer PhD completions to draw from and with an uncertain footing in the fields of both (or neither) creative writing and screen production. In order to come to a better understanding of what it means to write a screenplay in the academy, and more specifically, how a researcher responds to the challenges of framing a screenplay as a research artefact, we posed a series of questions to ignite discussion and debate. Covering topics that range from research design to screenwriting-as-creative-writing, the themes below represent a summary of these questions, collated in a way that we hope will invite further conversations in the field of screenwriting-as-research.

The problem of peer review in screen production: exploring issues and proposing solutions

ABSTRACTWith traditional academic work, the process of peer review is seemingly clear – work is refereed as a way of gatekeeping ideas and research contributions, to ensure it is not publicly available until it has passed a test of rigour, originality, clarity and significance to the field. Those with assumed knowledge of the discipline are the said gatekeepers, tasked with assessing the work on the basis of disciplinary knowledge and general research expertise. This often rests on the notion that the research and knowledge are made explicit in the writing. This is problematic for non-traditional academic work, such as screen production and media art, because a key value in this kind of work is the ability to communicate implicitly and differently from what can be articulated within the parameters of written, academic language. This tension between implicit and explicit knowledge claims has been one source of difficulty for evaluating and therefore rewarding creative practice research. In this paper, we draw on a recent gathering of screen production academics, the two-day Sightlines: Filmmaking in the academy festival and conference, to help us discuss the complexities of peer reviewing screen production works for the academy, and to help us point towards possible solutions. We focus specifically on where and in what form the articulation of research might happen to assist the peer reviewing process, where the common approach is to write a research statement that makes explicit the methodologies undertaken and the new knowledge being claimed. This has incited some protest from within the screen production community: for example, how do we account with language for the very thing that is in excess of language, the contribution that finds its unique place outside of language and within the moving image? We therefore also discuss the dialogic relationship between art and writing, and the kinds of relationality that might be created to help make room for the ‘in-articulable’. In short, how research and new knowledge in a screen work might be illuminated, and how an academic peer might therefore evaluate it. We conclude by discussing an approach we are currently taking to develop an online, refereed publication for screen production works, the Sightlines Journal, in response to both the current literature on the topic and the gathering of discipline academics. Given the various contexts in which these questions arise in relation to screen production research (during the writing of a PhD, in the examination process, and in professional environments), we address them accordingly as individual yet interwoven discussions driven by the shared need to find workable solutions to recurring problems.

Collaboration, critique and a community of peers: the benefits of peer learning groups for screen production research degrees

ABSTRACTIn response to both my own desire for professional development and candidates' desires for more support, in 2012 I began to coordinate a peer-to-peer learning group for creative writing research degree students at RMIT University. Still going strong over three years later, the group brings together creative practice higher degree by research (HDR) candidates working in areas such as prose fiction and nonfiction, screenwriting, poetry and digital narratives. In the context of existing literature on peer-to-peer learning in the HDR space, the group is somewhat unique in that a range of academics from across the host School of Media and Communication supervise the group's members, rather than them all being my own candidates. My role in the group is that of a facilitator, guiding an activity that complements rather than replaces the more traditional supervisor-candidate model of supervision. In this way, the group seeks to re-distribute and enhance the experience of HDR candidates, adding value to their experience of research training through opportunities to collaborate and critique, and through high levels of encouragement from their peers, to present and publish their work, and to work towards a more timely completion. This article draws on the author's experiences of facilitating such a group to discuss the benefits of peer-to-peer learning for creative practice research degrees broadly, and for screen production research degrees specifically. Exploring areas such as collaboration, critique and the building of a community of peers, the article outlines a range of strengths and weaknesses in leading a peer-to-peer learning group at this level. By drawing on the group's activities and reflections from some of its members, the article also seeks to provide guidance to supervisors and candidates working on screen production research degrees who are looking for ways to enhance how they offer and experience research training.

The challenge of film to innovation and entrepreneurship studies

Abstract This commentary supplements the work of a creative practice research project that generates new ways of thinking about innovation and entrepreneurial processes. Our creative method, underwritten by the logic of sensation and presented in film format, operates as an alternative form of research in these fields, where results are normally conveyed in book or journal paper. Film-based research has developed distinctive qualitative, empirical and theoretical vocabularies that can expand the nature and range of evidence, argument and expression across the broad range of innovation and entrepreneurship studies. 600 Mills, the film that accompanies this paper, is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/08109028.2017.1336011.

Constellations and connections: the playful space of the creative practice research degree

The academic space for creative practice research is dynamic and ‘is always in the process of being made. It is never finished: never closed’ [Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: Sage, 9]. It is a research space filled with constellations of connections, which serves as a vital incubator for risk taking, reflexivity and fearless critical thinking. Higher degree by research candidates working in this space move fluidly between thinking and making, allowing their creative practice to become informed and innovative. They draw on a community of practice – of thinkers and makers – to make connections that form constellations in order to extend and expand what they would usually do. Their practice thus becomes their methodology in an environment that is responsive to new concepts and customs. Supervising research degree candidates involves being there with them in that messy space. When candidates try to organise ideas and practices into neat boxes, and those boxes leak, supervisors play an important role in making sure the content does not collapse. Often creative practice researchers themselves, supervisors are both the guardians of academic standards and the ones who dare candidates to ‘go there’. The result is the creation of a dynamic space for play, where boundaries can be pushed. In this paper we present a series of ideas about and reflective experiences of supervising creative practice research degree candidates, namely in the disciplines of screen and media production, and creative writing. We discuss the nature of the creative practice research space – philosophically, metaphorically and practically – and we discuss the role of the supervisor in creating and navigating this space. We end by reflecting on and how this type of space is not only important for creative practice research, but is also a vital component of the contemporary academy.

Narrative as a tool for critical reflective practice in the creative industries

This paper explores the efficacy of narrative in reflective practice across a range of creative disciplines. As practitioners within the creative industries, the authors internalise experience and re-contextualise it as stories, designs, music videos, fiction and non-fiction films and dance. They are uniquely placed to examine narrative in critical reflection through the prism of their creative practice and in so doing offer insights into reconceptualising professional practice. The authors demonstrate how engagement with and reflection on and in their stories enables wider reflection. Their purpose in reflection is not just to learn from mistakes but to develop an epistemology of practice that enables them to apply rigorous academic inquiry to articulate their tacit professional knowledge and establish new methods for dealing with uncertainty in creative practice research.

A screenwriter's journey into theme, and how creative writing research might help us to define screen production research

Although critical works relevant to screen production research exist, they are often fragmented (screen production placed alongside general media production) and, I want to suggest, not brave enough to embrace the term screen production research. With ‘dirty’ connotations to an industry some see far removed from the academy, screen production research has not yet been able to justify its existence, unlike, for example, the discipline of creative writing, which has achieved a lot in regard to its research agenda and footprint. This article thus proposes definitions and examples from which we might build the foundations for a better understanding of screen production research and its future potential in the academy. This will be achieved by offering a critical and reflective discussion of how theme can be used as a creative and collaborative tool for use in the development of a screenplay. By doing this, the article seeks not to theorise practice per se, but rather to intellectualise it for the benefit of practitioner-academics with interests in screen production research specifically, and creative practice research more broadly. As an important aspect of screen production, screenwriting is a useful lens through which to consider this type of research, partly because of how it is often positioned between creative writing and screen production. For example, the practice of screenwriting might be understood as creative writing, and the development of a screenplay might be understood as screen production. Similarly, the processes undertaken by the screenwriter might be understood in relation to other types of creative writer, and the role played by the screenwriter might be understood in relation to the role played by the producer or director. Furthermore, because the discipline of creative writing has a highly developed understanding of creative practice research, discussing the ‘sub-discipline’ of screenwriting allows us to draw from its rich literature, which as a result helps to define some of the parameters by which we might understand screen production research.