What is "ethnovideography"

Ethnovideography is a methodology of using video in the study of peoples, communities, groups or sub-groups. It espouses the use of video to document reality instead of "creating" realities. Hence, ethnovideographic presentations are unscripted. Narrations, background music, sound effects and special effects are not employed. The use of artificial lighting, obtrusive hardware, production crews and all but the simplest camera technique are discouraged.

Although originally experimented upon by the Los Baños science community in the Philippines in the early 1990s as adjuncts to environmental impact assessments (EIAs), studies of indigenous knowledge systems and documentation of agricultural best practice, it traces its roots in the cinéma vérité movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the difference being its emphasis on small format or digital format video and its adoption of extra-sociological subjects. Being a methodology, ethnovideography is theory-based and adopts a set of procedures or protocols.