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6/9/2014 The Ethnographic Shooting Ratio | Savage Minds

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Not es and Queries in Ant hropology
Savage Minds

June 2, 2014
Kerim
The Ethnographic Shooting Ratio
One of the questions I get asked most often by graduate students doing
ethnographic research is about how much data they need to collect. I
think this is especially troublesome for those who are doing fieldwork
somewhere far away, where limited time and funds mean that they will
unlikely be able to make a return trip after they return from the field. But
even those doing research closer to home want to know How much is
enough? In answering this question I draw on my experience as a
documentary filmmaker.
A shooting ratio is the ratio between the total duration of its footage
created for possible use in a project and that which appears in its final cut.
For a Hollywood film, where the scenes are planned in advance, this
might be four to one. That is, shooting four hours of footage for every
hour of the final film. Now that films have largely gone digital, producers
no longer need to worry about the cost of expensive film stock, but it still
costs a lot to have actors and crew out for a day and nobody wants to
waste too much time shooting the same scene over and over again.
For documentary films, however, it is different. While you usually have a
conception in your mind about what the final story will look like, you have
to be ready to follow your subjects wherever the story takes you. For this
reason the shooting ratio on a documentary film is likely to be more like
60:1, one hour of footage for each minute used in the final film. Some
documentary films might even be as high as 80:1, or higher. For Please
Dont Beat Me, Sir!, which is 75 minutes long, we shot over 200 hours of
footage. You might interview someone for an hour but only end up using
a thirty second sound bite from the whole interview. The problem is, until

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you are in the editing room, you never know which thirty second sound
bite will be the one you need.
So what does this mean for ethnographic research? Well, one thing you
can do is to start writing up your research while you are in the field. If you
are editing a documentary film while shooting it makes it easier to see
where the story is developing and that helps you focus your shooting on
the subjects that are most likely to make it to the final cut. Similarly, if you
start writing up your notes every day while in the field you will be better
able to focus your efforts. Of course, that isnt practical for everyone
especially for shorter, more intensive, field trips where you might simply
be too exhausted after writing up field notes to think about editing and
reviewing them as well.
On a documentary film you might pick a number of subjects that seem to
have potential and then only end up using some of their stories in your
ethnography. Similarly, by the time you are about half way through your
fieldwork you should have a sense of who these subjects might be. Take
some time to go over what youve collected on each of them and see
what gaps you might have left out. For instance, if you are comparing two
people with complementary life-trajectories, did you ask them each the
same questions? Are there people you only spoke to briefly who might
be worth returning to for a more in-depth interview? Here Im talking
about people as if it was a documentary film (which tend to be focused
on characters) but the same questions can be asked if you are focusing
on organizations or other topics. The important thing is to have a checklist
for the minimal data you need and to make sure youve collected at least
that much, with some redundancy as well.
Is there a data ratio you can aim for? Unfortunately, it is hard to quantify it
in that way. I use the concept of a shooting ratio to get students to
understand that you need to collect a lot of data in order to find that one
choice nugget upon which you will hinge and entire chapter of your
dissertation. Another analogy from documentary filmmaking is useful as
well: coverage. Coverage refers to the amount of footage shot and
different camera angles used to capture a scene. When in the post-
6/9/2014 The Ethnographic Shooting Ratio | Savage Minds
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How to
data collection, documentary film, Ethnography, Fieldwork, interviews
production process, the more camera coverage means that there is more
footage for the film editor to work with in assembling the final cut. In a
documentary film this might mean shooting the street where a subject
lives, as well as the front of their house and the walls of their living room,
etc. In ethnographic research you need coverage as well. Dont just
interview a person, but interview their friends, co-workers, family
members, etc. Dont just do interviews, but also collect as much written
material as you can about their activities. Also take notes on your
impressions of the person and the world they live in, just as if your notes
were a camera filming the street on which they live. (And, again, while I
am focusing on people I think the same ideas apply to ideas and
institutions as well.)
One reason I like putting it this way is that it focuses attention on doing
fieldwork for the final written ethnography, not just to answer questions in
the ethnographers head. Too many books Ive read on fieldwork focus
on the ethnographic investigation, even saying that you have enough data
when you no longer are learning anything new. I think this is wrong.
Collecting data isnt just about learning, it is also about collecting material
that can be used to flesh out a story or argument and make it come alive.
Thinking like a documentary filmmaker can help you do that.
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P. Kerim Friedman is an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic
Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan,
where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-
director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean
Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim
on Twitter.

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5 thoughts on The Ethnographic Shooting Ratio
John
McCreery
Nice analogy. Very apt.
June 2, 2014 at 2:26 am
Marco
Lazzarotti
I really enjoyed this post, thank for sharing
June 2, 2014 at 6:33 am
anthrotheor
ylearning
Nice. This is so true of research papers, too. I have such a
hard time getting younger students to understand that they
will NOT be using everything they read. Its getting them out
of the look it up and grab the first sort of relevant
information for your paper. I could blame Google and
Wikipedia, but students did it with encyclopedias before that.
Learning how to sift through tons of information and then
organizing it into a coherent narrative / persuasive
argument is a very difficult skill to learn or at least to teach!
June 2, 2014 at 12:17 pm
All of my colleagues and I have this problem. We never
know when to stop reading or collecting data, we are never
June 2, 2014 at 9:37 pm
6/9/2014 The Ethnographic Shooting Ratio | Savage Minds
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Marie-Pierre
Renaud
happy with the results of our work, and we simply dont find
what we write compelling, original or detailled enough.
Despite telling ourselves that we have to let go and accept
that papers, memoirs and thesis can never be perfect, its
easier said than done. Your analogy is a helpful one, and I do
think several of my fellow grad students colleagues will
benefit from it, especially the ones who are starting out!
antpjb@em
ory.edu
Excellent. Ill use this in teaching.
June 5, 2014 at 4:57 pm

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