Lara McEvoy - 319311
Unit 13: Final Major Project
week 3: 19/2/24 - 23/2/24
I spent the majority of this week focused on the content research section and making a start on my audience research.
Monday (19/2/24) consisted of me researching codes and conventions, specifically documentary ones. With the codes and conventions, I made the conscious decision to being with initial research into general codes and conventions to give myself a better understanding of what they are + how they work. When it came to looking at the general codes and conventions, I found that there were some codes I hadn’t heard of before, so chose to focus on the ones which I was taught by one of the lectures in year 1 of the course. After I had looked into the general codes and conventions in more detail than previously, I felt I was confident enough to move onto researching the documentary specific codes and conventions.
The documentary codes and conventions were really interesting to look into because I was able to discover what aspects of documentary are conventional, and how they can be used within the documentary format. Rather than using the given examples from my research source, I chose to use examples from documentaries I have seen myself so that I can put the conventions into context, giving myself a better understanding. Also, this will also help me later on with research when I undertake a critical analysis of an existing examples, because I have been able to spot them in documentaries, I have seen previously I will hopefully be able spot them in a documentary I haven’t seen before.
After looking into codes and conventions on Monday, when Tuesday + Wednesday came around, I decided to move onto modes of documentary. With the modes of documentary, I realised I had spent so much time in Unit 12 researching the modes and how they worked, that when it came to researching them now, I chose to explore only 2 modes in more detail. Making this decision allows me to undertake research which will actually be beneficial for my work, helping to inform my idea further and develop it in more detail. While looking into the modes, I chose to look at the codes and conventions of these modes as this will help me to implement them in my own work, and during the critical analysis of existing examples.
While undertaking content research, I made the decision to create an initial audience survey. This survey will allow me to see who the potential target audience is and if my idea would actually be watched. Here I have linked a button to the audience research page where you can find more information.
On Wednesday afternoon, I had my first mentor meeting with Danny where we went over my work. In this I was given a lot of useful advice on areas where I should either make slight adjustments or complete changes, which were understandable. Along with this, during the meeting I was able to find changes I needed to make to my proposal, ensuring that it fits in with the guidelines for UAL. As soon as the meeting was over, I ensured all relevant changes were made so that my website is ordered/labelled correctly.
In my hunt for a relevant existing example, I spoke to one of my lectures about how I struggled to find existing examples of work that I could either deconstruct or do a critical analysis on. He had seen one from the Royal Ballet so I should search for that. He was right, there is a documentary from the Royal Ballet which was released in 2016 called ‘Dancing the Nutcracker – Inside the Royal Ballet’, luckily this is extremely relevant to my idea because the dance school’s show is The Nutcracker. Finding this example is honestly such a relief as I now have an example I can look into, which will hopefully give me a better understanding of how I want my idea to be structured. To start off the research, I watched the documentary in full so that I could gain an understanding of how it was structured. The video is linked here, Dancing the Nutcracker.
Looking into the Royal Ballet example took up all of Thursday and Friday as I found that once I started writing about it, I just kept on going. This isn’t a bad thing; however, I just need to be extremely conscious about what I am writing and if it has actual value as if there isn’t value to it then there is no point in writing it. The documentary I chose to look into was so helpful as it allowed me to understand how a long form observational documentary actually works, and how given enough time a long-term documentary works from filming the beginning to end.
Next week, I am going to finish off the content research and move onto the audience survey analysis + looking at practical production research.