Wild Honey: Caring for Bees in a Divided Land

BACKGROUND This inquiry is situated within documentary practice research in documentary studies and contributes to debates examining the nexus between design and documentary (O’Flynn 2012), Dovey and Rose 2012). The use of design practices to produce the work explores how interactive documentary is affecting traditional forms and aims to address gaps in methods used to work with changing digital technologies and media practices. CONTRIBUTION Practice-led research is used to explore how a linear documentary is produced utilising design methods developed through research into interactive documentary. Wild Honey documents the harvest ritual of wild honeybees in West Timor and forms part of an ARC Discovery project. The geographer leading the ARC recorded the video and audio. My role as a producer involved providing expertise on the post-production, including direction on the narrative structure and style. Working with a trainee editor, I managed the editing and was responsible for delivering the work. I bring to this research substantial experience producing television documentaries, and academic and industry research producing interactive documentary projects. Referring to propositions (Keen, 2018), the work was produced using reflective practice methods (Schon 1983) and followed a prototyping process. Comprehending the affordances of the formats, the content and digital technologies used influenced the post-production process. Observations provided a list of propositions for linear documentary practice and future research would involve formulating a production framework to test with other practitioners. SIGNIFICANCE Completed on a low budget the success of Wild Honey gaining international distribution and film festival screen demonstrates the validity of the methods used to produce the work. This research draws attention to what design has to offer practitioners working with the complexity of making works in the fast-changing documentary project.