Looking for the Phoenix Within is video documentation on the process of this study and the PVPW. The video structure was kept simple, in a similar style to everyday web-based videos. However, I believe Looking for the Phoenix Within video documentation serves the purpose of reporting on this study. Today it is easy to post research findings as a short video clip on the internet on different video-sharing and educational websites.
Like others, researchers have the advantages of using video in its new form an availability due to technological advances and digitisation. The everyday web-based documentaries in different formats and lengths ‘have made possible mail-order video rental, digital video recorders, broadband television and cell phone
movies’(Aufderheide, 2007, p. 144).
The video documentation/reports that are made for publishing research results or academic reporting video documentaries are mostly distinguished by their ‘differences in audience, in emphasis, and, particularly, in the time frame’ (Shrum & Duque, 2012,
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p. 5). The other distinguishing aspect of an academic documentary is that it cannot have all the necessary features of a documentary film for the box office. An academic
documentary ‘responds to issues in the research literature, is produced for presentations at meetings and classrooms, and is provided without charge on the internet is
indistinguishable from the academic movies that characterise qualitative research products in the 21st century’ (Shrum & Duque, 2012, p. 5).
The other unique characteristic of Looking for the Phoenix Within video relates to the distribution style, which is designed for the internet. The overall aim of this study, and especially the PVPW training, was to enable the participants to play a more active role in the public sphere. Through digitisation, the public sphere is more open to those previously known as audiences who now play more significant roles in the online platforms. As the PVPW was designed to encourage its participants to distribute their videos on the internet to connect with others, the Looking for the Phoenix Within video was also produced to communicate and connect with an audience on the internet.
New media ‘documentaries are also becoming an ever-more-valued commercial enterprise at for-profit cable television networks and a popular amateur genre on YouTube’ (Nisbet & Aufderheide, 2009, p. 450). The video/visual explosion relates to what Thoman (1992) describes as the ‘image culture’ that changed our modern world.
Video has the capacity to grab people's attention in completely different ways. The rise in visual cultural more than 20 years ago attracted Davis’s (1992,n. p) attention, as he claimed ‘oral and written communication are in decline because a new form of
communication, communication by image, has emerged’. However, we translate it, and we have to accept the change in communication as inevitable. With the emergence of smart mobile phones, communication has changed in ways that were unthinkable 20
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years ago. The image culture has now changed from the influences of television and cinema to the everyday life of ordinary people.
Moreover, videos on the internet are radically changing the distribution possibilities available to documentary films that do not always get attention from film study scholars. As Aufderheide (2007, p. 147) points out:
New technologies vastly increase the volume of production under the rubric of documentary. This volume may create new subgenres or may eventually force rethinking. When political operatives, fourth graders, and product marketers all make downloadable documentaries, will we redraw parameters around what we mean by ‘documentary?’
Addressing this crucial question has been a concern for practitioners and scholars, especially when websites such as YouTube continue to expand the possibilities for documentary production.
Chapter summary
A fundamentally practical activity occurs within a broader social and cultural context.
Two of the critical methods used to reflect on my practice during the research project have been writing a reflective journal and video recording the PVPW sessions. My role was not to focus on the video recordings, as cameras were left in fixed positions, for the duration of the PVPW sessions. The audio captured by the cameras also severely
affected the outcome of the production. All the gathered raw data—video footage from the PVPW and the participants’ interviews—had to go through to the process of post-production. My role at that stage was focused on making choices and decisions about what would be used and the outcome of the product in terms of the best available
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options. The post-production process started with reviewing and logging the video clips.
Then I wrote a script in line with the goals of this study and available footage.
Naturally, questions have to be answered, such as: which stories I wanted to tell, how those stories should be told; whether one take is better than previous one, whether the background sound is too loud; or the dialogue worth using, and so on. This involvement in the storytelling brought up issues around my position as a researcher and producer, including the extent of my influence and choices in the outcome video, and,
importantly, whether a critical objective of this study that positioned me as insider researcher was the correct decision.
Given these points, I believe the strategy of being an insider researcher, with all the criticisms of the process of this study and production of the video report documentary, addresses its purpose well.
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This chapter provides an in-depth description of the participants’ characteristics and backgrounds. As Mann (2016) explains, transformation in the life of an immigrant is a gradual process and resiliency will be required to restructure the ego and re-establish an optimal psychic equilibrium. The strength of an immigrant’s self-identity and cultural identity before immigration has an enormous impact on their resiliency and capacity for adaptation to the new culture. This section includes six biographies of the PVPW participants.
The participants in this study were from three different groups in terms of nationality and visa type. Three were East Africans from two neighbouring countries on student visas with their dependents. The other three were Iranian-Australian women who had lived in Australia for less than four years: two had Australian citizenship, and the third held a permanent visa. The age range varied from 18–48 years (see Table 2). Against those variables, the women had a lot in common—not only in their experience as immigrants but in their goals and ideas. Five out of six participants in this study had tertiary education, and two were studying in a higher education program at the time of the PVPW.
The participants’ similarities in education level and comparable level of English
language were factors that brought them closer together during the PVPW. More details on the language requirements for those granted skill migration or student visas to Australia are explained in the next chapter in the ‘Language shock’ section.