The value of filmed interviews: issues of visualization, visual transcrips and the reading of visual texts

The increased access to video technology advances the use of visual methodologies in research. Following these developments, researchers are confronted with new challenges. Video recordings of interviews, as compared to audio recordings, are gaining interest in qualitative field research in the social sciences. The arguments given to justify the filming of interviews often relate to statements that value the additional information that visual images contribute to the research. But what is the nature of this additional information and what can researchers actually do with it? What is the value of the visual in filmed interviews? How can we transcribe and analyse the data encapsulated in video recorded interviews? How can we deal with the complexity of visualized interview data and what different ways of transcribing can we distinguish? This article addresses these questions by analysing the production and use of filmed interviews in an action research context and by making a critical inventory of existing perspectives and approaches on transcribing and analysing filmed narrative interviews.