ABSTRACT
Ethnographic film tends to be situated in naturalistic, uncoerced portrayals of subject matter, so such irreverence would likely not enter researchers’ minds let alone their research designs. In recent decades, filmmakers and audiences have grown more demanding for humane treatment of animals and ecosystems. Ethnography and ethnographic films evidence relational knowledge. Filmmaking techniques, or methods, involve the use of filmmaking equipment during production, or fieldwork, in ways reflective of specific filmmaking styles that are shaped through the edit of a film. The poetic style of documentary film positions aesthetics, nonlinear structuring, and untraditional representation as central to meaning and expression. Just as developments in the portability of media technology in the 1950’s and 1960’s enabled filmmakers to leave the studio and move into the worlds people inhabit, recent developments in technology give researchers and filmmakers opportunities to probe and mediate understandings of nonhuman worlds.
