Now that I’ve actually got time to think coherently, I feel like I can change my reflection format up a little bit.

The hardest part of starting a research project is figuring out exactly what I want to research. I assume that most of my classmates are probably in the same boat, but it’s still a massive pain in the neck. I think of ideas, and so many of them turn out to have nothing to do with the studio, I can’t find enough solid information from accurate sources, or I just panic from having to find anything useful within a massive block of text.

While I have an understanding of where the concepts of coverage and decoupage fit into the production process, I still feel like there’s a lot more for me to learn. However, looking through some of the studio prompts, it seems like analysing them is still fairly new, and it’s incredibly easy for many to confuse them with other elements of film production – be it montage, or even cinematography in general.

To make a long story short, I think I might have the start of an idea:

Faking Reality (working title)

I analyse found footage films, like The Blair Witch Project; figure out whether its use has any contribution to coverage and decoupage, or if it is only done for aesthetics; and how it is used in different genres.

Upon further research, and consulting with Robin, I feel like just questioning that one thing might be a bit shallow, and if it turns out that aesthetics were the only reason for found footage, then the assignment would be in vain.

I could look at documentaries, but I’m not exactly a fan of them, so it might come across as biased, but I could see through a lens of what Robin refers to as “facsimile documentaries” – which, to me, sound like serious mockumentaries. Perhaps examining the ways that a filmmaker is able to make a scene look “real.”

I’ll keep workshopping it, and hopefully I’ll be able to make my ideas seem coherent enough for the presentation.