Broadening my research into methodology techniques and concepts, I aim and intend to use a mix of both qualitative and quantitative methods to engage with both conceptual and historical ideas surrounding animated documentary creation, performance and engagement as well as current and direct audience responses from animated works I Intend to create myself.
Issue problem and Investigation
The key findings of this paper are to look into how viewers engage with animated documentaries in re-enacted states and how these findings can benefit or deny the essential argument of animated documentaries’ overall genre validity.
Key authors, Books and Writings and Structure of Arguments
Initial my key and most essential authors going forward will be Annabelle Honess Roe, Cristina Formenti, Bill Nichols, Brian Winston and Paul Ward. Historically and contextually looking at background information on the works of Grierson will be vital as his writings play a pivotal point in the formation of the documentary as we know it today. These particularly highlight books such as “Animated Documentary” by Anabelle Honess Roe, and “the Classical Animated Documentary” by Cristina Formenti as they expand upon both contemporary and historical documentary issues and information when regarding the animated documentary. Looking at the different documentary modes will be reliant on research from Bill Nichols’s “Blurred Boundaries” and Paul Wells’s “The Beautiful Village and the True Village: A consideration of Documentary Aesthetics” which cover and explain the theory behind documentary modes between live-action and animated documentary.
Survey Creation and Structure
My survey aims to look at the viewer engagement with several different styles of animated documentary and compare several factors such as overall engagement and understanding of the piece, Stylistic preference, lip sync and facial expression engagement, movement engagement and its overall ability to convince and express factual accounts. This will include live-action and animation comparative elements that will consider different accounts of factual retelling. I think a key part of the survey considerations will be the quality of animation as well as aspects such as lighting and rendering. So when choosing footage I will be intentional to compare specific videos against each other. For example: using two non-rendered pieces of animation together to even out the generalized audiences engagement.
Data Analysis Process
Regarding the Gender, Age, Preferences, Engagement and overall impact the different elements had on different survey takers will be taken into consideration and applied to a graph which will summarize the other all objective and subjective elements of the animation enjoyment. Looking at this and contextually applying the different areas of this thesis research such as aesthetic design, animation methods, empathetic engagement and relationship to interview.
Resources, Materials and Tools
My survey itself will involve using the most random mix of people that are of different, ages, backgrounds, Identities and nationalities as I can involve. I feel in order to get a sense of documentary engagement however, it will be important to involve both academic and non-academic people who appreciate and understand animation in a different way to the general public. This also considers the idea of younger audiences versus older audiences.