Hopefully this gets posted grr

WHAT I'VE DONE OVER THE CHRISTMAS OFFICER:
- Finished I'd say 80% of report
- Tweaked storyboard - the way I've answered my topic in my essay is much more structured than my intial storyboard, so I've decided to follow this instead for the documentary
- Finished 80% of survey - unfortunately I still have a couple left to do.
- Communicated with journalist, she'll email the answers to my interview questions in the NY.

PLANS FOR NY:
(Basically what's detailed in my last post).

Supervisor feedback

Hello Diane
Your blog is brilliant - you are using it for exactly the purpose that I'd intended.  Plenty of material for your blog, and it will help you to be able to reflect back on this when you come to evaluate the research process later on after Christmas.
Great work

R

Progress Report

- Survey - approximately 60 people surveyed with old system (old photos) with the next 40 people or so I will use Rebecca's suggestion (a mixture of faces with or without golden ratio)
- All interviews are done. I had contacted a Guardian journalist a few weeks ago about a article she had published which relates to my project...she emailed me back on Monday, saying I could email her my questions. Wouldv'e been nice if I could film her, but the email will do *sigh*
- I completed all my research for the actual content of the documentary about a month ago (obviously if I do find anything useful I will add it on). Researching on documentary making however isn't.
- Visuals: e.g. graphs on the ethnic composition of NY Fashion Weeks from 08' are all done, analysing it in my project has begun.

WHAT I NEED TO DO NEXT:
- My priorities for my documentary was to film everyone else and not myself (seeing as I can do my slots at any time). This week and next will include scenic shots and me explaining the plethora of things my project includes.
- Download FinalCut Pro on my mac - I keep saying I'll do it, but unfortunately my wireless modem is broken *sheds a tear*. Having this on my mac would allow me to do all the editing during the Christmas period from the comfort of my home :)
- Finish Report: I've already started my report...the main task is to...finish it.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something...

What I meant by "X/Y"

Initially, I wanted to do a focus group. This fell apart. The people I wanted to take part were all available on different days blah blah blah and there's no point doing a focus group with two people at a time. So, recently, I began to reconsider a social experiment using 50 people. This would include: - The use of 5 pictures (5 pictures of males for the females and visa versa). - The participants would then answer questions like "who do you think is the less intelligent?" or "who is the lesbian?"; studies have used similar questions in similar experiments e.g. one study found that people label the person they find the most attractive as intelligent and another has found that people will label the "less attractive" as the lesbian. Another study using children found that generally, children of all races would label the darkest cartoon girl as stupid and the whitest cartoon girl as the most pretty - even though the cartoon girl was the same but there were just differences in skin tones. - I could test whether these findings would appear in my study also. Moreover, I could conduct this study over time, e.g. using people when they are free (so doing 5 or 10 people at a time)instead having to relying on when everyone is free all at the same time. The only problem is...workload. I havent completed my survey and on my time management matrix that is the number one priority, adding this social experiment may cause problems...so the best option now is to wait until I finish the survey of 100 people. As we discussed in a previous EPQ session (on primary and secondary sources)...you need 6-8 sources for a successful epq. So far, for primary - I have 2 (interviews and surveys) and for secondary - I have 4(books, journals, TV shows and magazines). Hmm...

So...

- Thursday = I interviewed 3 friends (2 girls, 1 boy), there'll be more to come! Hopefully my male friends will come round to being filmed *sigh*
- Friday = I interviewed the plastic surgeon, I had mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness (especially as the Dr. is well known in medical circles) - but the interview went really well. The Dr. was friendly and inviting and so that helped and everything he said was very insightful. The interview took about 15 mins, haven't looked over the footage yet - I'm sure it's very cringeworthy!

PLAN FOR NEXT FEW WEEKS:
- WEEK "1" : 8th Nov - 4th Dec = more interviews + X/Y
- WEEK "2" : 5th Dec - 11th Dec = Filming of me introducing topic, talking about issues and voiceovers begins
- WEEK "3" : 12th Dec - 16th Dec = scenic shots etc + X/Y

I plan to finish all filming by the end of the 3rd week, but sometimes when you look back on footage you have to add things on to - hopefully I won't need to do this, especially as I plan to start editing once I have all my footage.

That reminds me, I need to download a free trial of Final Cut Pro onto my mac so I can edit my documentary from the comfort of my own home ^_^...that calls for a new external harddrive methinks!


*X/Y = complete survey and focus group/social experiment (depends on how much people I can rustle up) will explain further in next blog...I've put it as X/Y as I will need to sort out times for when my camerawomen are free...especially after the mishaps of last week.

Progress Update:

- Well this wednesday and the last have been a mess! I was supposed to finish my survey last wednesday, but I had to do my LNAT exam so I pushed the time for filming a bit later - my camerawoman got confused and was unable to make it. So I rescheduled it for this wednesday - both camerawomen were unavailable. I know my production schedule allows for flexibility, but I hate when things dont go to plan!
- Thursday 24th = an interview with a friend
- Friday 25th = interview with plastic surgeon. I am uber excited. I hope it will all go to plan!


Will update again by the end of the week...

Photos of faces - alex

hi diane,

found this while looking up some stuff for my project. thought it my be relevant to yours.

The Beautiful-is-Familiar effect

Psychologist Benoît Monin reports a series of experiments in which subjects, looking at photographs of faces, have to judge whether they have seen those faces before. It is repeatedly found that attractive faces are more likely to be mistakenly labeled as familiar.^[8]Monin interprets this result in terms of attribute substitution. The heuristic attribute in this case is a "warm glow"; a positive feeling towards someone that might either be due to their being familiar or being attractive. This interpretation has been criticised, because not all the variance in the familiarity data is accounted for by the attractiveness of the photograph.

The Human Face, BBC Mini-series, John Cleese

What I picked up on from the first part of the series:
- Cleese is a comedian and he began the documentary with a bit of humor e.g he was standing on a face, some of the background music was comical.
- All the interviews were medium shots, which I found a bit unusual as usually documentaries of this kind often have close-ups of body language etc.
- Most of the music was instrumentals.
- In most of the interviews, the interviewee was seated in a dark place with lighting. This made reinforced that I definitely need to check the lighting in the plastic surgeon's office and any other locations as I don't want to have to carry unnecessary equipment.
- There was use of both colour and black/white.

- The only things that were zoomed in on were the magazines and photos.

Survey

So I began my survey of 100 people today...

Some of the problems I encountered today:
- Location: the initial location (Islington high street) was problematic as there were (eight) charity workers working in the same location. We decided to move and ended on property we didn't know was private property (middle of N1 centre). The most successful location was near Chapel market.
- Amount of people: many people were reluctant to become a part of the documentary, in the time available, we managed to survey 40 people. 22 were willing to be filmed, 18 only wanted their voice recorded. The amount of males and females were equal also.
- Equipment: one of the crew members was a media student (a friend as suggested by Rebecca to help out), she was late and although this didn't affect the actual taking of the survey, we actually completely forgot the mic! It was only until we brought the equipment back that Rebecca brought it up and the crew member mentioned that we needed it.

I guess I can call this is a learning curve (or whatever they call it) seeing as I have 60 more people to do.
Improvements for next time:
- Remember the mic!
- Begin the filming later (as I started at 10:30) around lunchtime
- Change of location possibly?

My Schedule for the month

SCHEDULE:
- Wednesday 9th - Survey of 100 people
- Wednesday 16th - Focus Group (?) (Needs a location asap)
- Friday 25th - Interview with plastic surgeon

I have done a time management matrix and the survey is my number priority!



I have completed a large proportion of my research, but I've yet to watch documentaries related to my topic (as all of the documentaries I have watched for technical reasons aren't related to my topic). Some of the documentaries I have chosen to watch are:
- The Human Face, 4-part BBC Series, John Cleese, 2001
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280262/
- America the Beautiful, Darryl Roberts, 2007
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1040007/
- Never Perfect, Mai Anh Tran, 2007
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1103165/

Progress and Feedback

The EPQ session on wednesday really motivated me! Rebecca went over Primary and Secondary sources and I'm definitely guilty for believing that my GCSE knowledge of it would help the project, the brainstorm added some new types of sources that I will use for my project e.g. Focus groups.
The sheet on "Prioritising your workload" has also enabled me to actually sort out what I need to plan for the following week.

The feedback on my project proposal has really helped also, what I've taken from it:
- Do a Management Matrix
- Add more books! (My research so far only includes a few books for my project and so this is crucial)
- Develop production schedule

Reading up on Documentary making

I decided to read up on documentary making before I actually start filming:

Book: The complete guide to Digital Video, Ed Gaskall

‬What I have taken on from this book:
- Always have a filming schedule!
- Always think of these questions beforehand: What is going to be shot? When is it going to be shot?
Are there any interviews? Will there be dialogue?

--------------------------
http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_13/section_5/artc1A.html
"Guidelines for producing a short documentary by Kirsten Sørensen, Mette Bahnsen, Henrik Holch, Gitte Hvid and Lise Otte (makers of Jutta Ravn, 2000):"

What I learnt from this article:
- Use tv and/or film documentaries as primary inspiration > "discuss the qualities of each film and note the good elements. This will probably give you an idea of how you want to structure your own film."
- Ethics: From the beginning you must consider whether you are portraying people appropriately. Are you twisting in any way the image(s) of your subject(s)? Respect your subjects (which includes an honest representation of them) must come before making a great film.
- Interviewing: "If your film contains an interview session it is important that you experiment with different interview techniques before you start shooting."

----------------------------------

In the next few days, I will:
- watch a selection of documentaries (from sites such as
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/category/documentary/)akes or breaks a documentary film in order to learn about which kind of genres and filmaking styles I like.
- Create an outline of documentary
- Organise interviews!

Pilot Study

Rebecca suggested that I conduct a pilot study - which I did. I did the pilot study on 10 random people; I received positive feedback but some of the improvements included:
- have tick boxes instead of having the respondent circle things in.
- (question 3) "how would you describe your nationality?" - the options are not clear e.g. "Shouldn't 'Black African' be 'Black British' instead of having "British" separate? I have decided to reconsider the options available for this question.
- (question 4) "Do you believe that there is a 'mathematical formula' for beauty?" - a few of the respondents were confused by the question and so having an explanation of what this is (before the question) may help.
- (question 7) "Why do you think that less ethnic models are represented in fashion, magazines etc?" - some of the respondents were confused as to what "ethnic" meant and felt the space available to write was too small. To solve this, I will add in brackets what I mean by "ethnic" as to prevent confusion and create a larger space to write an answer.
- (question 10) "What does 'beauty' mean to you?"- one of the respondents said having this as a closed question wouldn't allow people with other perceptions of beauty to answer how they really feel. Although I understand this, having this question as a broad question would make it harder for me to analyse the question, especially as people would come up with various definitions of beauty.

Plan

My project now focuses on "The Formula of Beauty" and if all goes to plan *fingers crossed*, it will follow my rough week by week layout.
Week 1 = carrying out a questionnaire of public opinion on their perception of beauty.
I will post the full plan as I go along..

Woop Woop first post!

*Sigh* as with every project, you always encounter setbacks...never thought I'd experience one even before I started! Let's just hope the rest of the project isn't like this...

Welcome to your blog

You have a different design of blog to the rest of the group - you can change it if you don't like it.