I think I have been fairly successful with my research and that the research that I have done has had a very positive impact on my final project. Although I've had some issues with my research such as being unable to contact people who I wanted, I was still able to get a good range of primary, secondary and practical research.
For my primary research I contacted a domestic abuse victim and tried my best to arrange a face to face interview or a phone interview. Unfortunately this didn't happen due to me not being orgnaised enough and keeping on track with it. As I had a great deal of work to do for this project, contacting her kept getting pushed to the back of things to do. However I am still really pleased that I did contact her as she was a very lovely person and seemed really willing to help me, which was very nice.
Another piece of primary research that I did was contacting Cumbria police to ask them directly for some statistics. This was actually quite a challenge to find the appropriate email address/phone number to contact them on, however once I did get into contact with them, they were very swift with their response and provided me with some extremely useful information. Some of the information that they provided me with regarding them seeing a drop in the number of victims coming forward actually sparked an idea for my project and I changed my advertisements for it. I made sure to aim one of my ads at encouraging domestic abuse victims to come forward. This ad, in my opinion was actually my most successful one, and I probably wouldn't have had that idea without contacting Cumbria police.
As for my practical reseach, I conducted this for my photography research and for my SFX makeup research. For the photography research, I took photographs to see how different settings on the camera affected the over all photograph. I found this really helpful as not only did I learn how to change certain settings, but I learnt what their effect was and the best ways to change them to suit a paritular scene. With the SFX makeup, I tried out a couple of looks, I created a bruise and I created a cut. I only did very minimal research on the SFX makeup, as I decided half way through my production that if I used SFX makeup it would take away from the impact of the image. If I really needed to I could just add makeup in Photoshop in post production (which I actually ended up doing).
I used secondary research in every single research area as secondary research from aritcles and websites on the internet is the most easily accessible. I made sure to use reliable sources and didn't use wikipedia at all for this project. I also put in lots of quotes to back up the information which I got from the websites. I feel that I learned a lot from these secondary research sources. I think the most helpful pieces of secondary research that I had were the big long 'cheat sheets' in my photography research, as I find it easiest to learn visually.
At the start of my project I made a post of all the individual subject areas that I wanted to reseach and which parts of them subjects I wanted to look into. At the start of every topic in my research blog, I also wrote what I wanted to find out during my research of that area. I found this to be incredibly helpful, as I was able to stick to my specific area of research. I did go off topic a little bit in some areas, and perhaps didn't get all of the information that I intended to get. However I don't see this as a problem, as I was still able to create a successful final product with the research that I had. I feel that you can clearly see throughout my project how my research has affected my project,
For example, with my photography research, you can see that in my production, I tried out some long exposure shots which I had learned about in my research. I also did the same with my post production in Photoshop where I used tutorials I found in my research to help me out with the project. I also found the huge Photoshop 'cheat sheet' with all the short cuts on it really helpful as they helped to speed up the whole photoshop process.
In conclusion, I think the research that I conducted was relevant and helpful to my project. If I had more time, I would have liked to have gone into more depth with certain areas and tried to contact more people in each area to get some more efficient primary resarch.
For my primary research I contacted a domestic abuse victim and tried my best to arrange a face to face interview or a phone interview. Unfortunately this didn't happen due to me not being orgnaised enough and keeping on track with it. As I had a great deal of work to do for this project, contacting her kept getting pushed to the back of things to do. However I am still really pleased that I did contact her as she was a very lovely person and seemed really willing to help me, which was very nice.
Another piece of primary research that I did was contacting Cumbria police to ask them directly for some statistics. This was actually quite a challenge to find the appropriate email address/phone number to contact them on, however once I did get into contact with them, they were very swift with their response and provided me with some extremely useful information. Some of the information that they provided me with regarding them seeing a drop in the number of victims coming forward actually sparked an idea for my project and I changed my advertisements for it. I made sure to aim one of my ads at encouraging domestic abuse victims to come forward. This ad, in my opinion was actually my most successful one, and I probably wouldn't have had that idea without contacting Cumbria police.
As for my practical reseach, I conducted this for my photography research and for my SFX makeup research. For the photography research, I took photographs to see how different settings on the camera affected the over all photograph. I found this really helpful as not only did I learn how to change certain settings, but I learnt what their effect was and the best ways to change them to suit a paritular scene. With the SFX makeup, I tried out a couple of looks, I created a bruise and I created a cut. I only did very minimal research on the SFX makeup, as I decided half way through my production that if I used SFX makeup it would take away from the impact of the image. If I really needed to I could just add makeup in Photoshop in post production (which I actually ended up doing).
I used secondary research in every single research area as secondary research from aritcles and websites on the internet is the most easily accessible. I made sure to use reliable sources and didn't use wikipedia at all for this project. I also put in lots of quotes to back up the information which I got from the websites. I feel that I learned a lot from these secondary research sources. I think the most helpful pieces of secondary research that I had were the big long 'cheat sheets' in my photography research, as I find it easiest to learn visually.
At the start of my project I made a post of all the individual subject areas that I wanted to reseach and which parts of them subjects I wanted to look into. At the start of every topic in my research blog, I also wrote what I wanted to find out during my research of that area. I found this to be incredibly helpful, as I was able to stick to my specific area of research. I did go off topic a little bit in some areas, and perhaps didn't get all of the information that I intended to get. However I don't see this as a problem, as I was still able to create a successful final product with the research that I had. I feel that you can clearly see throughout my project how my research has affected my project,
For example, with my photography research, you can see that in my production, I tried out some long exposure shots which I had learned about in my research. I also did the same with my post production in Photoshop where I used tutorials I found in my research to help me out with the project. I also found the huge Photoshop 'cheat sheet' with all the short cuts on it really helpful as they helped to speed up the whole photoshop process.
In conclusion, I think the research that I conducted was relevant and helpful to my project. If I had more time, I would have liked to have gone into more depth with certain areas and tried to contact more people in each area to get some more efficient primary resarch.