WEEKLY JOURNALS
Week Two - Research
RESEARCH
What did you learn from your
research?
How has the research for your
medium helped you improve your
ideas?
How has the research for your genre
helped you improve your ideas?
In my research so far I have learnt information about
documentary’s in three different sections. These where medium,
genre and content. I learnt about documentary’s themselves,
the six different styles/genre a documentary could be and which
one I chosen to make in my production. The codes and
conventions of documentary’s , information on past famous
examples and what I am going to include in the documentary’s
content for example who we are planning on interviewing.
When researching the medium that I had chosen which is a
documentary. I found out information about what
documentary’s where and what purpose they served. I also
found out information about what awards I could win by entering
competitions with my production. For example the documentary
feature Oscar. This award is an Oscar given to what is voted as
the best documentary of the year. It has helped me improve my
idea by showing me what standard I would have to produce my
documentary to. So that it could be entered in the awards I was
looking into.
I moved onto the genre and the style I decided on making an
expository documentary. From doing this research I feel that I
have a much better understanding of what I must include in my
documentary for it to fit in to the expository genre and how I
would do this. For my own production I will have to use a verbal
commentary throughout the production to keep the audience
informed and so they are up to date with what we are taking
from each interview. We will later have to decide what viewpoint
we have on music being changed by modern things such as
technology and talent shows so that we can try and persuade
the audience to what we think is right.
We have to come up with the argument so that we can prove a
point to the audience and then present what we believe to be
the solutions. Finally we now have the structure of an expository
documentary with the beginning, middle and end that we can
follow as I was not sure how we would structure this production. I
also learnt the codes and conventions of an expository
documentary so that I could film it in the right style for its lighting,
narrative, mise en scene and camera angles.
How has researching the conventions
of your chosen genre helped you
understand what is required from you
in order to meet a distinction grade?
Researching the conventions for the genre of the expository
documentary has helped me understand the standard of work I
will have to produce in order to meet the distinction grade. I will
have to up the quantity of the work for the grade I want has
looking a past examples they have much more work on their
page than I have done for the second week.

How has including a variety of sources
(primary and secondary) helped with
your understanding of your medium /
genre?
Getting research from both primary and secondary sources. Has
helped me understand the medium and genre a lot better. It
was helped me do it myself so I remember it much more after
actually writing about it. And secondary has allowed me to see
what already exists so I can take lots of information from this and
include it in my own production.

What sources of information did you
look at that were different from your
proposed project?
One big source that I used that were different from the proposed
project are when I analysed the two famous existing examples.
This is because they are not related to the topic we are looking
into in anyway but they are made in the same style and genre
which is what I am interested in.

How will this be useful to your This will be helpful in my planning because I was able to see the
planning? most common used conventions for example the camera angles
used in both. From this I will be able to know how I will plan and
film my own production so that it fits in with the genre and style.

How has the research for your
content/topic helped you improve
your ideas?
Research into the content of my documentary has helped to
improve my ideas. This is due to giving my facts and statistics as
well as opinions on the two main topics. These are how auto tune
and talent show affect the music industry. It also gave me
information about who we are planning to interview this will allow
me to think of questions best suiting for the person to make sure I
get the best answers and the most information possible.

How has the research into I have not completed this section yet so I cannot answer at this
artists/producers helped you improve point in time.
your ideas?

What work do you need to complete To stay on track for the next week I still need to complete filming
outside of lessons to stay on track? a focus group for the genre section of research. I will need to do
this over the weekend or on the first Monday back as I don’t
want to fall behind and have to do this much later on in the unit.

High Grade Tips

Research
● ‘Thorough research’ - include plenty of sources and detailed analysis of this information
● ‘relevant & coherent’ – make sure your research sources are not just the same as the Media
product you hope to make - and talk about how they inform your planning
● ‘sustained’ – continue your research throughout the eleven-week project and don’t just limit it to
the first two weeks
● ‘accomplished & considered’ – all of the above referred to in your daily/weekly reflections