Unit 2 - Process of Research

Research Process

For this unit we were tasked with following a logical procedure to research, analyse, gather data, correlate and synthesise ideas to inform and influence my own music video production. Along the way we were required to investigate and show evidence of what we did, what we learned and how we could improve on future research projects.

To look into a genre of music video first I decided on what to look at. After careful consideration at what genres I already knew a little about and what I liked, knowing it would catch my interest more, I decided to look at Brit-pop. The first part of knowledge gained was the historical context of the genre, looking into musical influence timelines; the culture of the artists and by knowing when the videos were made. The name "Brit" references Britain and "Pop" is a nod to the popular culture this movement was a celebration of things that were British. 

What was gathered next were some examples of music videos through internet resources although the content was near 20 years old and the medium of release would have been. I then reviewed the content for its suitability for purpose, analysed the music videos to find common themes and conventions. This was evident in textual and subtextual themes in which many videos had a load of stuff that can be considered narrative. 

In order to gain a deeper understanding I looked into a couple of theories looking at internet sources again. The secondary sources that I used helped with more general understanding and application of the theories. 

Then I applied the knowledge learned through theories to the Music videos again to have a differently structured analysis for the topic. 

I then wanted to have some of my conclusions validated and to do that I decided to employ both Qualitative and Quantitative research. I created a questionnaire based on what people would expect to see in music video, what would engage with them today and what they would believe would be included in a Brit-pop inspired music video. I handed it out and e-mailed it to various people I knew and waited for results, pursuing them after a week. For the Qualitative research I did a focus group in which I would show them clips from Brit-pop music videos, particularly those of which I had reviewed, to gather more in-depth results to correlate to my inferred beliefs and to validate my interpretations.