Designing the experience

: a model of production for immersive experiential 360-degree documentary

Abstract

The research in this PhD sits at the complex intersection of technologies, production cultures and ways of experiencing 360-degree documentary content, and interrogates the ways in which, through the practices of documentary film production, experience is constructed within 360-degree documentary narratives.

This thesis combines peer-reviewed practice-based outputs, academic journal articles and book chapters supported by a Critical Overview which contextualises these outputs and provides a critical examination of their interrelation. All outputs were produced between 2016 and 2019 at the moment of what Rose (2018) calls “the immersive turn” in documentary production: a period when the capability and cost of production and distribution technologies enabled the more widespread production of such documentaries. At that moment, there was a significant amount of writing about how to use such technologies to create immersive documentary but there was, initially at least, little interrogation of why. This research has led to the development and testing of a model to provide such an understanding.

The earlier outputs in the portfolio influenced and enabled the formulation of the manifesto and the model which is then tested and interrogated in the later outputs. The main foci of the manifesto that are impacted by, and impact upon, the individual outputs are:

• the emergence of new technologies of production and distribution and the corresponding need for new practices to fully explore their possibilities
• the capacity of 360-degree documentary to enable more immersive experiences than two-dimensional documentary, with an awareness of the possibilities and limits of such experiences
• the awareness of the move from ‘viewing’ to ‘experiencing’ and the implications that this has on documentary filmmaking practices
• the enhanced agency of the ‘experiencer’ of 360-degree documentary and the reduced role of the documentary producer in creating meaning
• the potential of new technologies to democratise documentary filmmaking practice for positive outcomes, socially and culturally
• the fact that immersive, 360-degree filmmaking is part of an emerging wider cultural economy of immersive media

The research repositions 360-degree documentary in the context of production. Although this is a model that emerged from original research and practice, it has a wider, ongoing applicability as it both enhances the existing understanding of 360-degree documentary production practice and narratives and can inform the future production of 360-documentary and other emerging immersive forms.

Date of Award	Mar 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Mel Jordan (Supervisor), Kevin Walker (Supervisor) & Jacqueline Cawston (Supervisor)