Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Evaluation of My Research Methods

For this research project I decided to research into cinematography and editing techniques within action cinema. The reason for me choosing this subject is because it is a genre of film that I do not watch as much, compared to Sci-Fi or comedy. Through me choosing a subject that I did not know too much about I knew that I would be able to use more research techniques and learn more from my research findings. For my research I used methods such as interviews, websites and books. Some of these proved to be a lot more useful than others.

My preferred method of research would be doing interviews as you can get more information from it as well as it being targeted at your own personal taste, because of my subject being quite technical and only relating to one genre that meant that for me, my research was not going to be as easy as finding some books or finding a few interviews or movie reviews online. I am glad that I did do these interviews, as out of all my researching methods for me this was my biggest help in giving me more of an understanding on what I wanted to find out. My other favourite research method was doing a questionnaire, the reason for me doing this was it would not only help me understand what people think about action films but it would also help me understand how much knowledge people actually have in the process of making films like the ones in my examples, therefore I would definitely use this type of research method again.

I feel that the Internet played a very big part in my blog as it allowed me to use videos clips from YouTube for my examples and it also allowed me to do research methods such as looking into film reviews. Although I do not think that the Internet is the most accurate way of researching I do believe it is still a good way to be able to find information more suited for your area of research.  Through using YouTube it allowed me to be able to show people what I was talking about in each post. I found this very useful, as I was able to talk more technically about certain scenes. The only step back I had with using YouTube was that it did not always have the certain films that I wanted to talk about which then made me have to think of other action films I could use as an example instead. In my introduction post I used Rambo as an example and after writing about it I then could not find the scene I wanted to use anywhere, this meant having to use the trailer for the film instead. After this problem occurring a couple of times I have learnt to plan out my posts more accurately, knowing exactly what film I want and exactly which scene. Other than these small step backs I would really recommend using YouTube as a research source to get your information off as it helps make understanding your posts so much more clearer.

For me books were my least favourite method of research as I am more of a practical based person and prefer to watch videos or search on the Internet as my way of learning. Although I did learn quite a lot from the books I rented out, trying to find books that linked to my area of study proved to be quite difficult. If I were to use books as a source of research again I would make sure that my chosen area of study was quite open in what I could talk about, whereas mine was quite closed and was limited to what research I could find relating to it.


Overall I feel that my research methods have been really useful and effective. I feel that because I made my research quite practical based by editing clips together and going out and finding other ways to make a track and dolly. I feel that because everyone has their own ways of researching and learning it is good to get a mixture of research methods involved. Some people are quite visual with their learning, which is exactly how I am, this being the reason I added clips for people to watch and pictures. Because some people are quite academic with their learning I thought that some people would benefit from seeing sources from books and statistics from my questionnaire. I feel that my only improvement in my blog could be some of my research methods. I feel that to get more information from people I could have done a couple of focus group meetings and done a couple of surveys out and around Newcastle. Other than missing out on doing these alternate ways of research I feel that my methods were good and very useful. 

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