Shelby Prichard

Profile

Project Title: Turbid Filmmaking (Practice-based)

Supervisors: Dr Sasha Litvintseva and Dr Anat Pick

My PhD, ‘Turbid Filmmaking’, through both theory and practice, experiments with filmmaking methodologies and formal and aesthetic strategies that aim to encounter marine creatures more on their own terms. Building on recent theoretical work that engages with water as a medium, I draw upon the notion of turbidity, which as an optical measure of the relative opacity of water, highlights the limits of human perception and knowledge while also registering the ways in which the ocean and its creatures resist revelation. Turbid filmmaking was also developed through the making of two films focused on marine creatures and informed by my own embodied experience of descending beneath the surface of the ocean with a camera and attending to the various human and nonhuman agencies at play. Fathomless (2024, 28’, single-channel video) explores the connection between ways of looking, forms of mediation, and ideologies of mastery and control, while Beyond My Vision, Fish Sing  (2026, 18’, four-channel video / surround sound) offers an audiovisual encounter with creatures at a coral reef that imagines a highly mediated, multisensorial mode of relation that eschews visual mastery.

Previous qualifications:

MA in Film Studies (Distinction), Queen Mary University of London (2020)

BA in English (Cum Laude), Duke University (2007)

Teaching

Teaching Fellow, QMUL Department of Film (2024-2025)

Teaching Associate, QMUL Department of Film (2023-2024)

Modules I have taught on include:

• FLM7200 MA Final Film Project
• FLM501 Documentary Theory and Practice
• FLM403 Production Skills
• FLM6038/7038 Forms of Film Practice
• FLM5212 Film Futures

Research

Research Interests:

Experimental documentary,

Artists’ moving image,

Media theory,

Cinema and the nonhuman,

Ocean humanities,

Environmental humanities,

Film sound.

Publications

Select Films

Beyond My Vision, Fish Sing (2026) – Film (18’, Dolby Atmos) and Four-Channel Video Installation with Surround Sound.

Fathomless (2025, 28’).

Destroyed Be Forever All the Bonds of Nature (2022, 22’)

Public Engagement

SPYSCAPE Spy Museum, Chief of Staff (New York City, 2017-2018).

National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Chief of Staff / Deputy Chief of Staff (New York City, 2013-2017).

New York City Mayor’s Office, Policy Advisor / Assistant Chief of Staff to Deputy Mayor for Operations (New York City, 2010-2013).