Every Boy Wants a Toy Gun
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 34065
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
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- Month
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- Year
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- My output consists of a 50:00 minutes cut of my documentary, which includes the first two chapters of the film. The film’s final length is estimated to be 70 - 80 minutes, including the third and final chapter.
Due to Covid-19, I was forced to postpone the additional shooting periods in Liverpool (UK) and Normandy (France), which are essential to complete the last chapter of the film. Further, the travel restrictions prevented me from flying to Italy in June/July 2020, to complete the final phase of the film’s post-production phase with the editor, including the colour grade and sound mix.
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- My documentary practice is part of a research project to investigate the relationship between roleplay and female identity by foregrounding my engagement with various subcultures. This film advances the intellectual project to examine male roleplay and hero-worship through the performativity of war re-enactments and rock star personas and sheds light on the way cultural norms of masculinity are sampled, embodied and reforged.
This research agenda engages with recent debates around gender and performance in documentary cinema, for example in Shilyh Warren’s Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film (2019) and the essays in Joram Ten Brink and Joshua Oppenheimer’s Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence (2012). Previous female-made documentaries about roleplay, such as Casting JonBenet (2017), The Arbor (2010), have focused on female subjects, but my film’s original intervention uses reflexive techniques to offer a female perspective on male identity.
The film rigorously applies a practice I have refined across my career. My work is built on a three-tier model: intimate footage acquired through close relationships with my subjects sits alongside scripted sequences, which enable my authorial voice to emerge, and archival material, which contextualise the debates with which the film engages. This process enables me to tell my subject’s story while also exploring key discourses of gender, identity and roleplay. These debates are then made accessible through a hybrid documentary model, which uses editorial devices from fiction films. The meticulous application of these methods provides a robust, engaging interjection into the field.
The film will premiere at Leicester’s Phoenix before commencing a 2-year run at international festivals, followed by screenings in independent cinemas. Liverpool’s FACT and Manchester’s Imperial War Museum will use the film in educational events. I will pitch the film to Netflix and BBC’s Storyville strand for broadcast before moving to the iPlayer.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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