Reflection on how my research projects went

My first research project was finding and analysing a Media Hero. I had to investigate into his background and his path to becoming a media hero. The hero could be anyone whom you look up to and aspire to be like, as long as they are involved in the Media Industry. To start off this project, I did not know of any Media Heroes let alone have a Media Hero, which meant I had to get digging and look at the media's top heroes of all time. My research project for my Media Hero started off with secondary research as I had to have a basis and Media Hero with basic information in order to start collecting my primary research. I later on found my Media Hero by gathering a closer look at the films or tv episodes that I enjoy. I found links between the films that I enjoy, they were similar in many ways. I found that they were all based around the same genre, based around the same times and although they were different films, some of them had cultural links. From this, I took a closer look at the producers, directors, film crew and the people whom were involved in the making of this film. This is how I then found out about my Media Hero; Gabriele Muccino. Gabriele Muccino is an Italian film director who stars Will Smith in many of his dramatic film titles. Will Smith was the person whom got Gabriele Muccino into the United States to film many of his films after many producers had turned him down.

My research project for Media Heroes consisted of secondary research such as finding out who Gabriele Muccino is, the links between the films he makes, his background story and what brought him to filmmaking, his awards and so on. For this research project, it was easier to base my project around the foundations of secondary research as I did not have a budget where I could travel and gather further information therefore gathering secondary research allowed me to widen my research to a bigger extent from trustworthy websites. I wrote two blogs about my Media Heroes project which was: 'Comparing the range of research tools, methods and skills from Task 1' and the second blog was about my primary and secondary research skills. I felt that overall, this research project was a success as I had gathered a very broad project of Gabriele Muccino and the ways in which he aspirers me. The primary research such as questionnaires, surveys, bar charts and diagrams proved my secondary research to be right as many of the publics thoughts and feelings were the same as mine. If I were to do the research project again then I may have had a bigger budget to gather further primary research.

My second research project was 'Taylor's Daydream.' For Taylor's Daydream me and my group had to come up with a sequence in which represents the main character named Taylor having a daydream. The project had to be on college grounds and the storyboard had to consist of the first scene's actions and shots that were given. With the brief outline and first scene of the script, we had to give our own take on the project and escalate the storyline from the first scene. We first had to do plenty of research into what the project was asking for, what a daydream may be and consist of and the different takes or pathways in which we could take the Daydream sequence. I began looking at plenty of other films as I find films to be the easiest type of research as I personally am very good at film analysis. The films I watched such as 'The Matrix' taught me a lot. It taught me how Daydreams can have a fake illusion or false awakening which tricks the viewers mind into thinking that something may happen when the climax takes a very dangerous turn into the abyss. This was something that I was sure to add to my mind maps of ideas and was something that I definitely wanted to bring up in our group project as I thought that false awakenings and illusions are a great way to take the project as it is unique and different to others. My project again mainly consisted of secondary research as I prefer learning from other films and visuals on the internet. I did also include part of primary research as I again created surveys and questionnaires to gather the opinions of the public as the viewers opinions are the most important for a successful film to grow. For my Taylor's Daydream project, we made sequence including a false awakening where Taylor false asleep and gets changed by two weeping angels. Taylor runs back to college to find several more weeping angels that chase him when he turns his back to them, the scene then cuts to him waking up and everything is fine, or so the audience thinks. Overall, I believe that my research project for Taylor's Daydream went very well as I have included mind maps, a proposal, questionnaires, surveys and plenty of secondary research analysis films and video clips. If I were to do this projects research again then I would gather more primary research which is far more reliable, just as I would do the same with the Media Heroes project.