Public ethnography as film

Abstract

The British-born Apted, who now lives in California and currently serves as President of the Director's Guild of America, is in no sense a conventional reporter, nor is he formally trained in sociology (although long ago he studied history and law at Cambridge). Nevertheless his instincts and vision are fundamentally sociological ... Rather than reporting on research conducted by others, Apted's documen taries are made up almost entirely of primary material which he collects and shapes himself. The Up! documentary film series for which he is best known ... is essentially a longitudinal study of social class, comprised of in-depth, open-ended interviews recorded on film. Apted has followed a group of English children from highly diverse class backgrounds over more than four decades now, and the resulting film series has a worldwide following. It all started in 1964 (long before 'reality TV'!) when, having just completed a training program at the avant-garde Granada Television studios in Manchester, England, Apted was placed as a researcher on the project that became Seven Up! (directed by Paul Almont). He and a colleague were given three weeks to recruit children from a set of strategically chosen London schools across the class spectrum. There was no plan for a series at the time; but seven years later Apted pursued the idea. He went on to direct and produce all six of the follow-up films, and he personally has stayed in contact