A case study approach is commonly preferred when people or institutions are the object of study. This approach is suited to both in-depth data collection and qualitative methods, which are generally used to obtain more textured material than what may often be obtained by quantitative methods (Rountree and Laing, 1996, p. 99). This type of inquiry sees ‘an emphasis on the qualities of entities and on processes and meanings that are not experimentally examined or measured’ and often involves the use of ‘a wide range of interconnected interpretive practices’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003, p. 13). The approach should facilitate the examination of some of the discursive contradictions surrounding ideas of national cinema, in terms of stakeholders and texts.
Using case studies does not form a method in and of itself: ‘Case study is not a methodological choice but a choice of what is to be studied’ (Stake, 2003, p. 134). As such, selecting the sample forms only the first step of analysis. Deciding on the size of the sample is informed by multiple factors, not the least of which are the constraints of time and space which limit a study. These considerations were taken into account alongside the desire for a study which allowed for a thorough investigation of the films chosen. A large sample size does not lend itself to in-depth engagement with the texts.
Initially, it was assumed that a conventional case study approach was to be adopted here, involving a broad examination of contextual discourses and taking in several methods of analysis – however a more nuanced form of
‘case study’ developed in due course, with more emphasis on those aspects of text and context that offered most potential reward in relation to the theoretical framework of Chapter One.
The choice of films is predicated on a range of considerations. Due to the importance placed on national cinema stakeholders, the case study films would require a range of stakeholder relationships to be identifiable. The question of the relationship to government is an important one, as already argued, and each of the films selected may have a relationship to the interests of the New Zealand government that is different. Films with a range of ‘lives’
within the global context can be selected, and the device for this
contextualisation, Appadurai’s ‘scapes’ model, can be applied to track these.
The films, too, would need not to be entirely ‘unique’ within the New Zealand cinema production industry, but to offer a relatively typical range of circumstances as well as textual elements, such as themes, visual style and so on, and of production circumstances, such as budgets, anticipated audience and location of shooting. So a modified multiple case study approach is feasible (Yin, 2003), involving a number of films, each unique in the context but not so much as to be especially unusual. Thus, the selection of Kombi Nation (Lahood 2002), The Māori Merchant of Venice (Selwyn, 2001), The Lord of the Rings36 (Jackson, 2001-3), Little Bits of Light (Walker, 2003) and Whale Rider (Caro, 2003). All of these films were made in the post-1999 period, which was a significant period in New Zealand cinema production,37 and provides a somewhat arbitrary, though recent timeframe within which to focus the study.
The range of cinema production in New Zealand is wider and broader than feature film production, and encompasses short films, experimental cinema and television-film hybrids, among other forms of film. However, this study assumes that features are the best place to look for a national cinema, and does so for two reasons. The first is the to clearly define the object of study, in a similar way to the delineation of a timeframe. The second reason for concentrating attention on feature films it mimic the conventions of the national cinema literature.
However, even taking in account the limitations of looking at five films (rather than a larger number), there is the possibility of compiling an exhaustive file of primary information about each film. In order to concentrate on the ways the films demonstrate fissures in the commonly-held notions of national cinema, and on the practices and rituals of stakeholders, the case study approach will be adopted in a much more focussed way. In each film we will seek to identify the specific traces of stakeholder interest, embedded in ritual, to demonstrate and expand upon notions of media ritual. So the term
‘descriptive vignette’ better captures the focussed approach taken here, in the spirit of the case study but without some of its peripheral baggage.
36 Treated as one production for the purposes of this research.
One way of approaching this is by identifying the material traces of such rituals. Each film will be interrogated in order to highlight the layers constituting the concept of ‘national cinema’, using the techniques of semi-structured interviews, textual analysis and document analysis. The aim is first to identify the degree of consistency with the national cinema literature among the films, in relation to that material. Chapter Four examines the films in these terms, considering them in terms of the ways aspects of their production might be understood to underscore or authenticate their status as ‘New Zealand’
films. They are then subjected to the type of textual analysis commonly applied in studies of national cinema, before these textual features are considered with regard to stakeholder understandings of what constitutes New Zealand cinema. Using case studies allows for such a wide-ranging and thorough approach.
Subsequent to this, in Chapter Five the films are in relation to the framework of theory outlined in Chapter One. The emphasis on flagging and ritual, including the ritual reception of those textual features of the films that can be considered consistent with popular and academic readings of New Zealand cinema. This is in order to demonstrate the strength of the framework of national cinema as a collection of processes and stakeholder practices that facilitate a sense of connection with an imagined national common ground.
So, initially, an overview of the New Zealand cinema production industry is offered, using the preliminary findings from the national cinema literature review, taking in the various stakeholders and positioning the research in the global context using the ‘scapes’ model as a framing device.
This use of Appadurai’s work is valuable as a starting point because it enables the films to be viewed in terms of the larger flows to which they are subject and allows for the complex range of processes and stakeholders involved to be discussed in a non-reductive and less narrowly ‘local’ way.
Chapter Three is concerned with the question of whether the constitution of national cinema, as put forward in previous studies of instances of the national in cinema, is enough to account for the continuing perception of the concept of national cinema as relevant; it provides a background to New
37 This is discussed in the following chapter.
Zealand cinema in terms of history, context and stakeholders, foregrounding the more indepth consideration of the case study films that is the focus of Chapters Four and Five The intention is to clarify gradually the ritualisation of stakeholder practices in New Zealand cinema and to see if this ritualisation can be ‘read’ in the films’ production and reception.
‘Every case should serve a specific purpose within the overall scope of inquiry’ (Yin, 2003, p. 47). While, as outlined above, generalisation or comprehensiveness is not the aim of this project, some reflection of the range of feature film production in New Zealand is desirable. As such, films were selected that offered diverse elements in terms of production, context and
‘textual’ characteristics. The films themselves provide five different opportunities for examining some of the key media rituals involved in national cinema, and of the flagging the films may be understood as encompassing.
The films selected met criteria consistent with the basic arguments of national cinema. Each film, for example, has a range of significant stakeholders (such as financers, audiences, workers, and government agencies). In terms of the variety of stakeholders involved in the films, there are areas of overlap but collectively they suggest some of the complexity of forms of practice associated with ‘investing’ in the idea of national cinema; for example, different personnel, funding, production, distribution and exhibition patterns. Each film provides then for a different perspective on the media rituals involved. The films each present different production practices and circumstances, for example in finance, cinematographic conventions and audiences. In short, together they expose the matrix of features we need in order to analyse the interaction of rituals and interests.
In the case of some films, access to personnel was difficult (The Lord of the Rings is a case in point). On the other hand, there has been a great deal written about some of the films, particularly regarding their typicality or representativeness in relation to supposedly identifiable qualities of New Zealand cinema or the New Zealand national identity – precisely a form of media ritual being argued for here. Because of such unevenness, each case study film is subjected to a mix of semi-structured interviews with key personnel, document analysis and textual analysis, as judged appropriate;
choices that are based on the available documents and personnel, and on
various characteristics of the films. These choices will be clarified in the treatment of each film. For example, the wide range of written material focused on Whale Rider, such as reviews, critical and academic appraisals, publicity material and interviews, provides a rich source of information.
Different circumstances were presented in the case of Little Bits of Light, a small-budget film seen by very few; here, an interview with the writer-director, Campbell Walker, provided a good source of material for analysis.
Semi-structured Interviewing
Having been granted ethics approval from the relevant university committee, interviews with key production personnel from three of the case study films were undertaken. While, for some of the films, much has been previously published (including interviews featuring directors, actors and producers –The Lord of the Rings is the best example of this), there was comparatively little information available for others. Hence, interviewing some of those who worked on these films had the advantage of providing more in-depth information from those deeply involved in the filmmaking process, including their own interpretation of the ‘national’ character of the film in question. In some instances, these film workers were involved in every stage of the production process, including seeking government funding and negotiating with funding providers. Further, this interview approach enabled the collection of information and opinion from a specific group of stakeholders, that of practitioners, and their interests as stakeholders often emerged from these interviews.
Choosing only to carry out interviews with practitioners, rather than taking the approach of interviewing audience members as well, offers advantages and disadvantages. While those involved with the production and publicity of the films provide a fertile source of information about the films and the processes involved in their production and dissemination, this is perhaps the most biased group of stakeholders, in that the success or otherwise of distinctively ‘national’ films can have positive repercussions for their careers
and, by extension, their livelihoods. As is demonstrated in the following chapter in the context of New Zealand cinema production, practitioners have a stake in the concept of national cinema, particularly in terms of government financial support of cinema production. However, the limitations involved in using this group of stakeholders are balanced by the constraints of time and space, as well as by the quality of information they provide. This study hoped, instead, to reveal other, less often examined interests at work. Toward this end, interviews were carried out with Kombi Nation writer-director Grant Lahood, The Māori Merchant of Venice director Don Selwyn, and Little Bits Of Light writer-director Campbell Walker.
Semi-structured interviews were chosen in preference to questionnaires or open-ended interviews. This choice was made to steer the work away from standardised interview questions, due to each film having its unique aspects. This technique provides direction and focus while allowing for
“greater flexibility than the closed-ended type” (Burns, 2000, p. 424). The interviewed stakeholders’ opinions concerning their own understandings of New Zealand film and how their work on the case study films relates to that was of primary importance, in order that the relationship between media ritual and national cinema might be observed in terms of important stakeholders.
Document Analysis
A range of documents were sourced in undertaking the research.
These included marketing material, critical commentaries from both popular media and academic sources, material from trade publications, reviews and interviews from various publications. Further, government documents provide essential material, including policy and legislative documents, funding body decisions, press releases and promotional material arising from government funding bodies, and in one case an especially relevant government study.
This material strengthens the research, provides a broader picture, and constitutes the “variety of sources” required to reach robust conclusions (Rountree and Laing, 1996, pp. 103-104). Much of the government sourced material, like the interviewing of practitioner stakeholders, provides biased
information and, as such, can support exploration and exposure of stakeholder interests. Further, as an alternative to ‘traditional’ audience research, this approach provides some indirect but clear insights into a range of audience stakeholders, via documents such as government press releases and official box office figures. In the analysis of these documents, we are looking for traces of ritual, for the motivations, scale and effect of the actions of different stakeholders.
Textual Analysis
Here the term ‘textual analysis’ relates to what may be read as explicitly (in some instances intentionally) and recognisably ‘national’ within the texts. For the purpose of defining ‘textual analysis’ in the context of this study, I refer to Section 18 of the New Zealand Film Commission Act. There, considering relevant elements that may be identified in filmic texts, ‘New Zealand content’ is defined in terms of ‘the subject of the film’, ‘the locations at which the film was to be made’ and ‘the nationalities and places of residence’
of a range of those involved in the financing, writing and production of a film (1978). The notion of ‘subject’ is here the key textual one; the element most accessible to textual analysis of the films themselves.
The focus is then on scrutinising the texts to discover how and if they might be seen to embody the construction of the national. The following chapter features a discussion of the critical understandings of New Zealand cinema, and traces of the ‘national content’ indicated as underpinning will be sought in the films themselves. We shall see that, as in the national cinema literature, in the body of New Zealand cinema criticism there are specific markers of national cinema perceived the exist in narrative and mise-en-scène, including but not limited to language and location. The same approach can be employed to identify ways in which the filmic texts fall outside of this understanding of New Zealand ‘national content’. We will see that each of the films has textual elements that both underscore and undercut notions of the New Zealand nation and national cinema.
The national traces which may be read in the films concerned will be related to media ritual, which is integral to the central argument here. The funding of films with what are perceived as particularly ‘New Zealand’
characteristics, by funding bodies mandated via legislation to support ‘New Zealand content’ (here, Section 18 is again indicated) and the recognition of a variety of signs of ‘New Zealand’, such as landscape, language and story, comprise raw material of media ritual in this sense.