Writing Animated Documentary: A Theory of Practice

Abstract

This short discussion provides some introductory remarks on writing for the documentary form in animation. Taking into account theories of the place of animation in utilitarian films, avant-garde works and the essay film, the analysis, based on auto-ethnographic insights, provides some methods and approaches to developing animated documentary work. These include ‘Making Animation Choices’,  ‘Staging in Space’, ‘Using Attachment and Detachment’, developing ‘Episodic lists and Micro-Narratives’, and deploying ‘Transition and Associative Relations’. The analysis seeks to show that these approaches to the animated documentary reveal and evidence a theory of practice, and a practice of theory.