Partaking in both qualitive and quantitate research methods, I wish to create a survey which will aid in the findings of viewer engagement with animated documentary.
Survey Design
My survey has two potential designs which could be combined if time allows. The first is to place my own animated re-creations of live action interviews I have taken against each other and see which of the two versions engages and/ or informs viewers more effectively. The second idea is to categorise several documentaries within the different documentary modes defined by both bill Nichols and Paul Wells. This includes the “Expository”, “Performative” mode (Nichols, 1994), and in regards to animated documentary “Imitative” and “Fantastic mode”. These documentary’s will be ones that either particularly express the subjective or have cultural relevancy within the animated documentary medium. One of the core things beings assessed is participants overall awareness of performance and re-enactment with the material. The other core thing being assessed is the participants ability to recall information from the clip/ documentary they witness. There may be potential issues in gauge emotional engagement due to contextual investment that is created by longer form films.
Considering a previous study conducted by Annette Hill, There are several factors to consider. Hill assesses her participants within different class brackets and has a more restricted range of people. She states in her conclusion that perhaps the shortcomings of her study is that there is not enough range of cultures being tested against different documentary elements (Hill, 2008). These are things I will consider going into the survey building. For this I will try to gain as much research from various different ethnicities and cultures residing within the United Kingdom to help me get a more well rounded general opinion withing stretching the participants to a significantly larger amount of data to handle.
When assessing the aesthetic values of a documentary, I predict smoother, and more imitative forms of stylised animation will be preferable due to the audience associations with Disney animated features. However, generally animated documentary tends to drift away from that aesthetic; In examples such as Waltz with Bashir (Folman, 2008), Tower (Maitland, 2016) which are key academically praised films within the animated documentary genre, oppose this. I intend to try to use this opportunity to gain and create exposure, however, to less academically dominating films, and use a variety of cultures where I can within the subjective experience.
References
Hill, A. (2008) ‘Documentary Modes of Engagement’ in De Jong, W. and Austin, T. (eds)
Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives and Practices. Buckingham: Open University.
Pp. 218- 231