Research Tips

Lesson On Research

Today, we had a short lesson on research, I thought I had better make a blog on it as we did talk about some valuable tips as well as why and what we should be researching for our music video project. We began by suggesting what we think we should be studying. I have written down, that research can help the production of the project run more smoothly because a good schedule can make the difference between a stressful time or a productive time. I mentioned this, as in my last project we did not stick to our planned schedule and I will not make that mistake again!

Below are the rest of the ideas my class came up with, reasons: research is helpful:

• Inspiration (if you research a style, genre or song it may inspire you)

• Narrow down what you are looking into (this could be the potential song target audience)

• Make sure your idea is original (justify how your idea/plan is original)

• Save money on travel or props, (research the cheapest place to buy props)

• Awareness of your topic of choice (research the history/purpose of your chosen song)

• Fact checking, (back research up with quotes/other proof)

If all of this research is completed, then you may end up with more confidence going into the production side of the project. Confidence can help with the production side of the project, this is because when I do some research I write it down and generally write down things, I tend to remember them so when it comes to the actual production filming, if I have not got my research to hand, then I tend to only remember parts of it. For example, when we were filming our movie trailer, when we went to go shooting at Kes’s house, I didn’t have the research on production tips to hand. If I hadn’t of written them down, I may not have remembered to set the ISO on my camera to the correct setting, if this had happened, we would have needed to re-shoot the whole scene!

So, after we talked about the tips we came up with, we were given a printout by our teacher. We had to fill out what we thought we could do with researching more. So, this is what I believe I need to study.

• I thought I could first go through the Pink Floyd Reddit page and get a feel as to what set-dressing props we may need to acquire, the costumes that Pink Floyd and people in the 70s used to wear also locations and colours that fit with Pink Floyds style.

• Then I thought it could be a good idea to get some primary research as to what men and women, who grew up in the 70s feel about of our approach when it comes to the story; I will write some questions and voice record these mini-interviews and write up my findings.

• I will also look into the lyrics of the actual song we are doing our music video on and write up my findings. For example, if our idea completely contradicts the lyrics of the original song, we may need to make some changes to the scenes we have already got planned out.

• Finally, I will do some research into camera techniques; these techniques, this could be ones that I have used in the past or ones that I have been inspired to use from other videos I have watched or suggestions from the rest of my group. However, they must all fit in with the 70s style of filming.

I plan to get this research completed in the next couple of weeks, although I will continually reflect on how the research I am doing now can help me in the future (after the production stage).

Below is a picture I had taken from today’s lesson