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.