Participatory Filmmaking

Before embarking on a participatory film project, facilitators should reflect on the following:

• Communication and Purpose: Before beginning, consider carefully the intended outcomes of using participatory filmmaking and what will realistically be achievable through this method. For example, will it be used for policy engagement, awareness-raising, or community dialogue? Clear communication about the purpose, potential impact, and limitations of the project is essential to sustaining ethical, respectful, and effective collaboration. Transparency in realistic influence and outcomes of the method build trust and prevents disillusionment later in the process.
• Ethical Concerns: How will participants be informed about consent, privacy, and ownership of the footage?  Seek participants’ permission to share the film after it is completed, not only at the outset. Depending on the nature of the project, you may need to seek ethical approval at several points throughout the process, being responsive to participants' evolving views on the film as it develops.
• Subject Matter: Discussions about biodiversity loss and environmental change can evoke anxiety and strong emotions. It is important to manage and acknowledge these responses within the method. Facilitators can support participants by offering ways they can change or advocate for biodiversity conscious decision-making. Additional advice on facilitating these conversations can be found at Education Reboot, Natural Resources Defence Council, and Force of Nature
• Checklist: Do you have the skills, resources, equipment and time to dedicate to this method – if not it might be worth considering a different visual method instead, such as Photovoice. Alternatively, if resources allow, consider partnering with a trained Participatory Video facilitator when running the method for the first time.

In this video Geraldine Brown outlines important considerations to reflect on before applying Participatory Filmmaking:

Recruiting Participants:

Participatory filmmaking works well with a group of people that are familiar with each other, part of a group, project or Learning Community. Engaging a diverse group of participants ensures multiple perspectives are included. Effective recruitment strategies can include:

• Accommodation – Participatory filmmaking is time and energy intensive, even when participants are given flexibility in how much they wish to contribute. The method is most effective when participants are meaningfully engaged and feel a sense of connection to the group or community.
• Showing Appreciation – Cover expenses such as travel and provide refreshments. If permitted within your project’s ethical guidelines, offer financial payments or token in-kind gifts to participants by way of acknowledgement of their time and contribution. If direct payments are not possible, consider alternative forms of recognition such as free access to training, workshops, or other events. This signals respect and values people’s contributions.
• Partnering – Consider partnering with trusted local groups. Think about your network, who could benefit from this training and how?
• Accessibility- Address language, digital literacy, and technical support needs, and offer childcare options during the workshops.
• Engagement – Be present in the group you wish to work with before initiating the method and invitation to film. Build relationships through face-to-face conversations, attend local events, and spend time understanding the context. Place invitations in spaces where people already gather — such as schools, libraries, community centres, or local cafés — and frame the invitation as an opportunity for creative collaboration, not just attendance.

In this video Geraldine Brown explains why it is integral to understand the group you are working with and respect their input:

When using participatory film as a research method, attention should be paid to methodological rigour, ethical sensitivity, and reflexive practice.

Define research objectives

• Begin by clarifying what the participatory film process is intended to investigate, keeping in mind that objectives can shift as the project unfolds and should be shaped to the desires and priorities of participants.
• Research aims might include exploring how people represent biodiversity through stories of place, practice, or memory, and how visual media can capture relationships with species, habitats, and landscapes.
• Objectives may also focus on how filmmaking itself becomes a participatory project, creating opportunities for collaboration, creativity, and collective decision making.
• Researchers could examine the role of film screenings in sparking dialogue, advocacy, or policy engagement, considering how biodiversity is framed and debated across different audiences.
• Longer-term goals may include building capacity, strengthening community voice, or contributing to biodiversity action plans by positioning participants as co-creators of both knowledge and impact.

Data generation

• Participatory film can generate diverse materials, including raw footage, edited films, participant scripts or storyboards, researcher fieldnotes from filming sessions, and records of post-screening discussions or feedback notes.
• Researchers may also capture observations of how participants handle cameras, stage scenes, or negotiate editorial decisions, since these practices themselves reveal power relations and meaning making.
• Managing a large volume and variety of data requires clear strategies, such as maintaining detailed catalogues of footage, coding logs that track content and themes, and digital storage systems with agreed access protocols.
• Careful organisation not only ensures ethical management of data but also helps researchers and participants navigate extensive material collaboratively, keeping the process transparent and manageable.

Ethics

• Filmmaking raises distinctive ethical challenges, particularly because it involves images and voices that can be widely circulated.
• Clear consent procedures are essential, ensuring that participants retain control over how and where their material is shown.
• Sensitive topics may emerge unexpectedly during filming or editing, requiring careful facilitation and space for participants to withdraw material if they wish.
• Screening the film back to participants before wider dissemination is good practice, giving them the opportunity to review and, if necessary, retract or revise content.
• Confidentiality and safety must be prioritised, particularly where public visibility carries risks.
• Researchers should also clarify how film material will be used in publications and outputs, including whether images will be anonymised, represented through stills or transcripts, or shared in full, and ensure that participants agree to these forms of dissemination.

Positionality

• Filmmaking brings positionality to the forefront, since the presence of the researcher and the camera inevitably shapes what is recorded.
• Researchers should reflect on their role in selecting scenes, directing activity, and making editing choices, and how these decisions influence what stories are told and how they are framed.
• Sharing control of equipment or co-facilitating exercises can reduce distance and foster trust, but it also introduces new dynamics of influence and authority that must be acknowledged.
• Reflexive practice involves recognising how one’s own presence, affiliations, and interpretive stance shape the film-making process and the knowledge it produces.

Theoretical framing

• Participatory film connects with scholarship in visual anthropology, participatory action research, and media studies.
• It provides tools for interrogating power, representation, and voice, and contributes to wider debates on knowledge production, publics, and visibility.
• Links can be made to research traditions in visual methods, performance, narrative, and counter-mapping, as well as activist media that challenges dominant perspectives.
• This framing positions participatory film not only as a means of data collection but also as an intervention into how knowledge is created, circulated, and contested.

Analytical strategies

• Film data can be explored thematically to identify recurring ideas, values, or tensions across participant narratives.
• Narrative analysis can trace how participants structure stories of change, challenge, or identity, both in filmed content and in accompanying dialogue.
• Discourse and linguistic analysis can examine how language, metaphor, and imagery frame collective understandings, paying attention to silences or omissions as well as what is spoken.
• Visual analysis can explore symbolism, aesthetics, spatial representation, and the affective force of imagery, considering how meaning is carried through sound, gesture, and performance as well as words.
• Comparative or longitudinal approaches can analyse differences across films, groups, or time periods, showing how perspectives and practices evolve.
• Triangulation and validation strategies, such as combining film data with interviews, observation, or audience feedback, can strengthen credibility and highlight how meaning shifts across contexts of production and reception.
• Reflexivity remains essential, recognising that meaning emerges through co-production and is shaped by editorial and performative choices made during filming and screening.