As visual communication becomes more and more commonplace, it makes sense for scholars who have communicated primarily through text to consider how they might make contributions through a different medium. Roy Germano's analytic filmmaking approach argues that scholarship can be effectively presented through the documentary film format and that political scientists will reach larger and more diverse audiences by doing so. Many institutions are seeking ways to make pedagogy more innovative and interactive, and Germano is offering an analogous approach to improve the dissemination of scholarly research.

There is much to appreciate in Germano's essay. His emphasis on theory-driven research, on the ways in which analytic films can complement written scholarship, and his argument that we can reach policymakers and the public more effectively through film, are all persuasive. His experience in showing his own film, The Other Side of Immigration (TOSOI) to more than a hundred different audiences bears out his claims (p. 664). I was able to view TOSOI easily using my Netflix account, and my knowledge of the film enhanced my understanding of his article. However, while I am convinced by the general argument that the medium of film can provide an important extension of scholarly communication, I argue that the project as currently presented by Germano has flaws that need to be addressed before we proceed further with this approach.

Germano’s term, analytical filmmaking, recalls a prior scholarly endeavor that joined analytic methods to an existing narrative format: Analytic Narratives, as discussed and demonstrated in the Bates et al. volume of the same name. ^{Footnote 1} That approach showed how combining deductive, rigorous theories with narrative empirical data could provide us with richer and more convincing arguments and results than we had previously obtained. While the book was the subject of spirited debates about both the general premises and the specific analyses the authors carried out, ^{Footnote 2} we have seen the approach adopted by scholars across political science since then. ^{Footnote 3}

Analytical filmmaking offers similar promise in the way it combines the benefits of narratively structured filmmaking with a more deductive and transparent theoretical framework. Before it can fulfill that promise, however, we need to address two general areas in which the current proposal fall short.

First, Germano presents analytic filmmaking as a new enterprise, one that departs sharply from existing methods of conducting and disseminating research. While he is largely correct that political scientists have neglected the collection, analysis, and dissemination of visual data, he underemphasizes many of the similarities among visual, audio, and textual data collection and analysis while at the same time failing to note important ways in which the two differ.

Germano’s discussion of the way video data is collected and analyzed suggests a much greater departure from qualitative techniques than is the case in my experience. Researchers who collect data from interviews, archives, and participant observation use similar types of methods to gather purposive samples, almost invariably collect more audio and textual data than they will present in their finished projects, and code and analyze the data using systematic methods that can be understood and accessed by scholars who follow them. There is a greater commonality between video, audio, and text collection and analysis than the essay recognizes, and a greater attention to points of agreement would not only make the connections clearer, it would show scholars who are interested in producing video projects that they are further along the learning curve than they may realize. To the extent there are differences, such as the potential willingness of subjects to be filmed rather than recorded or have notes taken at interviews, it would be more useful to discuss these issues comparatively rather than as completely new issues in qualitative research. For example, Germano’s discussion of bias in data collection is very similar to concerns shared by researchers who conduct audio interviews of respondents drawn purposively from a given population.

Second, Germano’s discussion of documentary filmmaking focuses on a particular style of documentary and neglects to consider documentaries that are similar in their construction to the type of analytic filmmaking he argues for in the article. This emphasis on the differences and his overall tendency to categorize most documentaries as atheoretical storytelling create needless and potentially problematic schisms between two groups of empirical researchers who have a great deal in common, in terms of interests and methods.

The examples Germano offers illustrate the argument that current documentary filmmakers “typically adhere to a set of practices and norms that are incompatible with positive social science” since they emphasize “engaging characters” who are usually “eccentrics and outliers” (pp. 664–665). But the range of documentary film subjects and approaches is far greater than that presented by Germano. There are numerous important and well-known documentaries that take historical and social scientific events and processes as their subjects; the oeuvre of Frederick Wiseman, for example, is almost completely comprised of sociological concerns even though the films are nominally about specific institutions. Eyes on the Prize was about the Civil Rights Movement, and while it highlighted the roles of important individuals, it did not neglect the larger social context. ^{Footnote 4} Some documentary filmmakers make popular projects like Joost and Schulman’s Catfish, but others produce sociologically rich and analytically insightful studies.⁵ Drawing explicit links between analytic filmmaking in political science and these works seems both appropriate and useful.

Turning to the subject of Germano’s own work, immigration, I was struck while watching TOSOI how much I was reminded of Journey to America (JTA), an episode of the PBS series The American Experience. ⁶ JTA focuses on Ellis Island as a clearinghouse for immigration at the end of the 19^th century, but its larger topic is the immigrant experience. Its structure mirrors the immigrant’s journey, as it begins with narrated extracts from letters and diaries describing the home countries, continues with the arrival into New York harbor and the stressful processing of newcomers through Ellis Island, and ends with descriptions of the variety of American cities, towns, and rural areas in which the immigrants settled. Obviously there are many differences between the experiences of 1890 and 2010, but similarities are evident. Both substantively and stylistically, the two documentaries share a filmmaking style with their emphases on passage, movement, and the uncertainty and danger inherent in border crossings.

Perhaps the similarities between the films were especially apparent to me because when I began watching TOSOI I expected the differences to dominate. But in both cases, the documentaries are characterized by an overarching narrative structure despite the emphasis on the sociological and processual aspects of the analysis. It is difficult to escape the storytelling aspect of film as a medium, even when filmmakers are guided by deductive theory.

If analytic filmmaking is to fulfill the promise Germano expects, then the theoretical framework and the connection between theory and data need to be presented much more explicitly so that the viewer can be guided by it as the evidence is set forth. Without voiceover narration or an on-screen narrator laying out the theoretical points that shape the interpretation, the narrators presenting the evidence, who are complex and interesting characters in their own rights, can dominate the stage and draw attention away from the points they are making. Otherwise the audience can become focused on the characters, whether they are fictional or real. The more compelling and interesting the personal stories, the more likely the viewer will connect with the speakers, to the detriment of the specific arguments they are representing, and the viewer response to those arguments will be shaped in part by her sense of connection with the speaker.

These modifications to Germano’s approach bring analytic filmmaking closer to the methods and substance of textual analytic narratives. It foregrounds the theoretical foundations which distinguish the latter framework while still retaining the focus on narrative forms of data as sources of empirical evidence.

Roy Germano has posed a provocative and important argument in his article. Political scientists need to be attentive to and find ways to participate in the increasing role of visual communication. But if we are to extend our research through techniques like analytic filmmaking, it is important that we pay attention to the links it shares with existing forms of textual and visual qualitative research methods and projects.