Research Task: Week Six Example

I am not necessarily going to go in order here on my blog but as I am writing the course content I am also providing examples where I can.

So in class, we are looking at what is research? and then three forms of research that we should be expanding upon by application in our blogs.

In class, you learnt that research was; “the systematic investigation into, and study of, materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”

This is how your post should look however please do not copy my post just use this as an EXAMPLE

Research Class Exercise

Name something you have researched in the past for art, design or media.

I have researched the Czech photographer Josef Sudek

Explain how you researched this

I chose three internet sources that were most useful after looking at over 10 internet sources that contained information about the photographer and his work.  I then read the three internet sources that I wanted to use in my post very carefully and I began to write a post with the intention that I could explain how Josef Sudek's photography would inform my own still life/object images that I was taking for my project.

What facts did you discover? 

• Josef Sudek was born in 1896 and died in 1976.
• known as the ‘Poet of Prague’, was drawn to desolate landscapes, simple, solitary objects and the quiet, unpopulated street scenes of Prague, a city to which he dedicated his whole life.
• Sudek was originally a bookbinder but after fighting in the first world war and losing his right arm he studied photography.
• He was expelled from the local camera club for arguing for more progressive photography that moved away from a pictorialist style. He then set up his own group The Progressive Czech Photography Society in 1924. 
• People rarely appear in any of his work and between 1940 to 1954 he photographed The Windows of my Studio which were his best-known work of still lives and objects within his studio.

What NEW conclusions did you establish?

I did not necessarily establish new conclusions about his life however I looked carefully at his photographs and analysed these to inform my own practice. I looked at composition, tone, his methods of capturing the images, the use of windows, light and shadow. I also discussed the idea of time and how moments in time in a photograph.

In the next three sections, I will discuss research examples from a major project. Therefore to begin I will outline an example of a major project so it is clear the context of the research.

My major project is a short film that uses split-screen called 'Conversation with my walls'. I intend to create a script, storyboard, shooting plan and will edit this using Premier Pro. The finished film will be 3 minutes long.

Research into my major project

My project was about the doppelganger therefore I was interested in suing split screen in a film to convey this idea.  I will research into films using the split-screen effect. These will be: Annie Hall By Woody Allen, Snatch by Guy Richie. Back to the Future II. I will also look at the history of the split screen in cinema on how this evolved and how it is still used in cinema today.


I will consider how social and cultural factors have been exposed (such as in Back to the Future II and Annie Hall) by using split-screen. In Back to the Future II culturally how times have changed from when Marty's parents were young to being young in the 1980s. In Annie Hall it is the culturally and social differences of the families and the characters which are exposed through the split-screen techniques and also talking directly to camera - which is another technique that I am hoping to incorporate in my own film.


Here is an example of Split Screen use in Back to the Future II:

Research through my major project

I will be researching and testing Adobe Premier Pro to use as the editing tool on my project however I will also research other online editing tools for the film. I will try Videograbber and Pixiko as well to test these out.

I will also be creating a storyboard and script so I will use Celtx for the script formatting and for storyboarding I will try out Storyboardthat and Canva.

I will experiment with all of these and create posts to show how I have tried and tested these before deciding on the software I will complete my project with.

Research for my major project

For this area, I will be looking much more deeply at the concept of the conversation so I will research Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Shirley Valentine directed by Lewis Gilbert and her conversations with the wall


Please see the trailer here;

I will also look at Daniel Schreber and Memoirs of my Nervous Illness. These three very different sources look at how we talk to ourselves, think about ourselves, and how in the case of Godot it is what are we waiting for, and sometimes it feels that perhaps we are all waiting in some way for something ...


This is the outline of the research I will be carrying out, through this research I will discover new methods of working and I will explore my concept fully so that I can write my own original work.