Wednesday - Academic Writing, Research, Gareth feedback

 Harry went over some basic research methods with us. I'll be honest, I don't think I learned anything new during this session but Harry is always a fun person to have lecturing you! He did set us a task to research something and to use Harvard referencing, however, I feel ahead of the game as I wrote my practice report to get used to Harvard referencing. Ah well, this task will be easy then.

Main points to think about. Good sources include;

• Books
• Academic papers/journals
• Magazines
• Blog posts
• Websites
• Interviews
• Personal Communication 

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Jean Claude has thrown us in the deep end according to some people as he has set us our first academic piece of writing. Our task is to research a film idea and write a report on it.  I'll be honest, it sounds pretty easy. It's only 1500 words and he gave us this breakdown to follow.

1. The Introduction: A short paragraph that says or signposts what you will do.

2. The Idea: A paragraph that describes the Title of the idea, the Genre if it’s fiction, the Log Line (summary in one sentence of the idea), it’s central characters, and the Synopsis (an outline of the plot of your story).

3. Inspiration: A paragraph that says how you came up with the idea. Rack your brain and mention as many influences as possible - from distant or recent past – experiences, films, conversations, etc. Cite sources.

4. Originality: A paragraph on how original your idea is. To have a good stab at the section you need to do some research - you need to find similar stories/film to your idea, analyse how it is similar, and point out how yours is different. Cite sources.

5. Importance: A paragraph on why it’s an important story to make now. Is it topical? Does it resonate with cultural trends? Does it touch on universal themes ? Cite sources.

6. Factual context: A paragraph that describes the real-life context of your idea. This will need in-depth research – look for real-life examples of your story, statistics to back it up, testimonies from people who’ve experienced similar things. Cite sources.

7. Target audience: Who do you think would be interested in watching your film or documentary? Why? Back your judgement with evidence – eg statistics on cinema audiences for your genre or TV ratings?

8. Conclusion: Briefly summarize what you have done in the report, highlight what you think is the main finding of your research, and tell us what is your next step?

I'll get started tonight 

Although, we were supposed to have  a group chat with JC about our films ideas, however, he ended up not having enough time to talk to us and so we'll have the chat tomorrow.

The blue group did talk amongst themselves though and it was interesting to hear all the ideas that people have come up with. I feel like I might offer too much feedback, I am worried about sounding rude to people when I give them an idea on how to make something more compelling.

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