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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
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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