This book represents a departure from my previous monograph, Beyond the Screen (Atkinson, 2014) in which I interrogated the new and emergent spaces of cinematic engagement and film consumption from audience perspectives. Whilst Beyond the Screen offered considerations of the overlapping spaces where film audiences and producers inhabited the same (online) spaces, it was predominantly focused on new modes of cinema exhibition and film consumption. In contrast, Film Practice to Data Process explores the processes, people, spaces and representations of film and cinema production within a prolonged period of film-to-digital transition.

Research for this book began in 2011 when I was awarded an Open University (OU) SCORE fellowship – to explore the potential and realisation of Open Educational Resources with Film and Media education. It was at that point that I first made contact with Sally Potter's film company Adventure Pictures, since I was excited to discover that they had released a vast majority of the production materials from Potter's 1992 film Orlando in the framework of an online archive – SP-ARK.

Using a WordPress interface and Creative Commons licensing, SP-ARK had been made openly available to members of the public to explore and engage with. SP-ARK incorporated an online blogging tool which enabled users to trace ‘pathways’ through the archive and to allow others to follow in their archival footsteps.

I joined the SP-ARK team as part of my OU fellowship work and undertook a case study of the archive and its use with a number of Higher Education Institutions (Reported in Atkinson, 2012).

I experienced a moment of serendipity at the time of this work, since Sally Potter's then forthcoming film (BOMB, to eventually be titled Ginger & Rosa, and released in autumn 2012) went into Pre-Production. Situated in the Production Office, I was able to engage in observational activities around the film's making with a view to the further development and evolution of SP-ARK. These activities involved the collation of all of the materials of production and the interviewing of every crew member working on the film from the runners right up to the Director herself – and taking in the entire process – from development and financing right through to distribution, exhibition and reception.