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University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. / The growing concern about the role of ethics in western society has also touched documentary film-making. Yet, since the emergence in the late 1980s of the first journal articles discussing documentary ethics, the theoretical exploration of the key arguments in this field has been fitful. Debates amongst filmmakers about ethics are often immersed in topical discussions of production issues or issues relating to a few controversial films. With the exception of a few insightful works, there is little new analysis or examination devoted to exploring ethics in this discipline. This dissertation adds to the available body of work by examining in depth the ethics encountered in the production of a documentary film, Tagged, with young people, especially the ethics encoded in the aesthetic and discursive elements of the film. Theoretical discussions about ethics range from the analytical focus on the ethics of representation, through the use of subjective modes of expressivity and filmic techniques to epistemological analyses of specific issues such as privacy and the nature of consent that draw on legal and medical models. A study of relevant documentary films reveals the variety of approaches to the moral values reflected in their discourses and visual representations, and a range of authorial voices, heavily influenced by the relationship between filmmakers and subjects and by the production circumstances of each film. In Australia, broadcasters, funding bodies and production companies dominate the documentary film-making environment and their codes, editorial policies and protocols influence the whole sector of documentary filmmaking. By categorizing documentary within the broad scope of factual programming, they reflect an institutional gaze that fails to acknowledge those individuals including children and youth, who participate in its production. Through my examination of ethics in both the theory and practice, I address the relevant question of whether there should be a code of practice for documentary film-making. In focussing on my own ethical position and its translation into practice through the making of Tagged, I explore the ways in which the ethical stance that I established is pivotal to the documentary and represented both in the text and in the pragmatic choices of production. This led me to conclude that the development of an ethical position specific to a current project is an effective focus on the potential ethical conflicts in a production. From this I argue that while a broad code of conduct can provide valuable guidelines, it cannot replace the filmmakers’ investigation of their ethical practice and their establishment of an ethical statement and stance for their films thus creating a platform from which ethical conflicts can be understood and either avoided or resolved.

This thesis explores the significance of digital cinematic technology within the independent film community. The main objective of this study is to demonstrate how various forms of digital technology (including cameras, non-linear editing software, and projection systems) are "democratizing" the processes of production, post-production, distribution, and theatrical exhibition.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. / The growing concern about the role of ethics in western society has also touched documentary film-making. Yet, since the emergence in the late 1980s of the first journal articles discussing documentary ethics, the theoretical exploration of the key arguments in this field has been fitful. Debates amongst filmmakers about ethics are often immersed in topical discussions of production issues or issues relating to a few controversial films. With the exception of a few insightful works, there is little new analysis or examination devoted to exploring ethics in this discipline. This dissertation adds to the available body of work by examining in depth the ethics encountered in the production of a documentary film, Tagged, with young people, especially the ethics encoded in the aesthetic and discursive elements of the film. Theoretical discussions about ethics range from the analytical focus on the ethics of representation, through the use of subjective modes of expressivity and filmic techniques to epistemological analyses of specific issues such as privacy and the nature of consent that draw on legal and medical models. A study of relevant documentary films reveals the variety of approaches to the moral values reflected in their discourses and visual representations, and a range of authorial voices, heavily influenced by the relationship between filmmakers and subjects and by the production circumstances of each film. In Australia, broadcasters, funding bodies and production companies dominate the documentary film-making environment and their codes, editorial policies and protocols influence the whole sector of documentary filmmaking. By categorizing documentary within the broad scope of factual programming, they reflect an institutional gaze that fails to acknowledge those individuals including children and youth, who participate in its production. Through my examination of ethics in both the theory and practice, I address the relevant question of whether there should be a code of practice for documentary film-making. In focussing on my own ethical position and its translation into practice through the making of Tagged, I explore the ways in which the ethical stance that I established is pivotal to the documentary and represented both in the text and in the pragmatic choices of production. This led me to conclude that the development of an ethical position specific to a current project is an effective focus on the potential ethical conflicts in a production. From this I argue that while a broad code of conduct can provide valuable guidelines, it cannot replace the filmmakers’ investigation of their ethical practice and their establishment of an ethical statement and stance for their films thus creating a platform from which ethical conflicts can be understood and either avoided or resolved.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. / The growing concern about the role of ethics in western society has also touched documentary film-making. Yet, since the emergence in the late 1980s of the first journal articles discussing documentary ethics, the theoretical exploration of the key arguments in this field has been fitful. Debates amongst filmmakers about ethics are often immersed in topical discussions of production issues or issues relating to a few controversial films. With the exception of a few insightful works, there is little new analysis or examination devoted to exploring ethics in this discipline. This dissertation adds to the available body of work by examining in depth the ethics encountered in the production of a documentary film, Tagged, with young people, especially the ethics encoded in the aesthetic and discursive elements of the film. Theoretical discussions about ethics range from the analytical focus on the ethics of representation, through the use of subjective modes of expressivity and filmic techniques to epistemological analyses of specific issues such as privacy and the nature of consent that draw on legal and medical models. A study of relevant documentary films reveals the variety of approaches to the moral values reflected in their discourses and visual representations, and a range of authorial voices, heavily influenced by the relationship between filmmakers and subjects and by the production circumstances of each film. In Australia, broadcasters, funding bodies and production companies dominate the documentary film-making environment and their codes, editorial policies and protocols influence the whole sector of documentary filmmaking. By categorizing documentary within the broad scope of factual programming, they reflect an institutional gaze that fails to acknowledge those individuals including children and youth, who participate in its production. Through my examination of ethics in both the theory and practice, I address the relevant question of whether there should be a code of practice for documentary film-making. In focussing on my own ethical position and its translation into practice through the making of Tagged, I explore the ways in which the ethical stance that I established is pivotal to the documentary and represented both in the text and in the pragmatic choices of production. This led me to conclude that the development of an ethical position specific to a current project is an effective focus on the potential ethical conflicts in a production. From this I argue that while a broad code of conduct can provide valuable guidelines, it cannot replace the filmmakers’ investigation of their ethical practice and their establishment of an ethical statement and stance for their films thus creating a platform from which ethical conflicts can be understood and either avoided or resolved.

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Filmmakers first received widespread academic attention as case studies into the increasing casualisation of labour in post-industrial economies. Their precarious existence in project-based labour markets provided much food for thought about the future of work, while their status as artists and producers of culture entered them into debates around just what art is and how to approach it. But in light of recent transformations in the cultural industries and the accompanied blurring of boundaries between production and consumption, academic understandings of the lives filmmakers lead have also been somewhat blurred. This ethnography of networks of cultural production in Beirut re-introduces filmmakers into the very sociological debates that they helped spark. Might a return to the situated experience of these theoretically and methodologically challenging people, who form workgroups and collaborate with each other repeatedly across projects as they craft their own careers, shed productive light on academic understandings of precarity, cultural production and indeed our increasingly confusing relationships with the objects around us? With that in mind, in this thesis I ask the following research question: how are networks of film production formed and maintained in Beirut? Based on an 'insider' ethnography of various film projects weaved into a mixed-methods social network analytic methodology, I adopt a relational sociological approach that conceives of production networks as akin to social worlds and find three analytic planes to delve deeper into: markets, objects and relationships. In relation to markets, I echo the argument that current classification systems of cultural production are too consumption-based and adopt a social network markets framework more sensitised towards production. Here, I find that the cyclical, project-based relationship of patronage that ties production networks to their clients is highly varied and contingent, shaping not only the process of cultural production but also its organisational structure. Further, I argue that the management of these contingencies is key to the potential repeat collaboration not just with clients (and their own social networks), but fellow producers as well. But past projects do not simply disappear once completed, they might well come back to haunt their makers. Drawing upon ethnographic and recent historical data on a number of web-series that emerged out of Beirut between 2009 and 2012, I compare using two-mode networks the past and more recent projects my interlocutors were involved in. Here, I find that one's past projects shape one's future by conducing or hindering their chances of finding new work. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, I find that filmmakers (and those around them) increasingly define themselves (and are defined by others) in relation to the past projects they have done. Over time, though, as filmmakers collaborate on an increasing number of films, their relationships take on deeper characteristics than monochrome economic considerations. Here I draw upon the notion of embeddedness to shed light on emergent meaning at the network level across a number of projects and, therefore, the emergent social world-ness of networks. While the first set of findings relates to debates in the sociology of work and the second to those in the sociology of cultural production, my final analysis shows just how intimately the two are connected. I conclude by highlighting the potential of empirically-grounded relational sociological approaches to finessing our understandings of cultural work in its economic, social, but also material and technical contingencies.

The objective of this thesis is to examine and analyze the presentation of spaces, figures, and the processes of judgment in afterlife films. American and foreign titles as well as television series are assessed as afterlife films by two criteria: (1) A character has clinically died yet continues to exist and (2) a living character finds his or her self in an afterlife space. Films with characters that have near-death experiences (NDEs) are included in relation to the above three qualities. After screening nearly one hundred and thirty titles, I have found there is a basic formula structure that has been expanded and transformed into seven other structures, plus those that are combined for a unique narrative. The afterlife corpus is divided into five distinct eras by the quantity of releases that fluctuate in accordance with 20th and early 21st century cultural anxieties and technological advances. A secondary argument proposes why the afterlife story is perfectly suited to the film medium plus why the industry and audiences are incessantly drawn to the afterlife film premise. The afterlife film perpetuates universal and age-old questions on the significance of life and death in the guise of enticing sights and stories. Each afterlife film may have its own identifiable design and theme but they are connected to higher concerns of mortality and second chances.

Thesis (M.S. )--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2708. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as 1 leaf (iii). Includes bibliographical references (leaf 21).

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2805. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as 2 leaves (iii-iv). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59).