Group Tutorial 17/10

Yesterday we had the chance to sit down in our groups and discuss our progress with our research. This presented me with the opportunity to talk about my research question, because as it stands, I still don't have one. Whilst this is allowing me to be a little bit broader with my researching, I'm starting to panic a little bit because I feel i'm just going around in circles and not progressing anywhere.

Tutorial Notes

It turns out the tutorial left me with even more unanswered questions. Some really good points were made, and some potential questions were but forward to me (such as "Does shot framing effect performance?" and "Is theatrical performance the way to go with animating?"), so it was useful in that respect, but I feel the discussion has only presented me with more options and roads to go down, rather than narrowing down on a specific area.

As I was feeling a bit stuck I thought it would be best for me to take Richard's advice from our first lecture and write out a list of all my potential questions and thoughts, only I thought I'd take it one step further and take note of any potential chapters my dissertation could have, too. Though I don't feel that I'm much closer to determining a research question, it has made me feel like I'm on the right track again. It has also made me think about other aspects of my dissertation that I have not yet considered; for instance I've come to realise that I would like to focus on films for my research and case studies, rather than TV series or otherwise, and although I would personally like to focus on 2D (especially for the practical element of my project) it would be beneficial for me to not rule out 3D films and techniques at this stage. It may be that I just write the odd chapter on this topic as it is certainly relevant. 

It also seems that I am leaning towards looking at realism in performance, and looking at animations with naturalistic actions. The next steps from here could be to start looking at identifying examples that fit this description, so that I can do a close reading of them. Whether this will include human or anthropomorphic characters, I am yet undecided, so it's probably for the best I have a selection of the two.