This reflective essay explores how documenting might be made to work strategically in the doctoral process by thinking about three functions of screen documentation: Documentation as a research practice; documentation as ‘evidence of a performance or process’ and documentation as an integral strategy in the final presentation/defense of a thesis. The writing refers to different documentation strategies including examples of poetic documentary in the work of visual artist Helmuth Costard (1971), filmmaker Babette Mangolte (1971) and documentor Becky Edmunds (2007) exploring how recordings, stills and other screen artefacts might be part of a creative research methodology. Included in the text are original documentation scores for exploration.