Following on from the Blog task in February, I had to choose one particular topic to focus my essay on. For my topic, I researched some of the essays Hito Steyerl had written in Wretched of the Screen. From her essays, the one that was most prominent was about “cuts”; which in my first mini task I described as examining the many meanings of a cut, whether that be the cinematic context of connecting and transitioning between shots, or the physical context of cutting fat through dieting and cutting off body parts through amputation. She discusses cuts in an economic and metaphorical sense, delving into concepts such as the body natural and the body politic. Steyerl goes on to discuss the role of the cut in post production, as well as its relationship with production and reproduction.’
The part that interested me most was about film editing. When I began to think about my research question the following week, I decided to make film editing the basis of my essay. After I had decided on the question, I discussed this with my tutor who felt that the subject would be too limited in order to meet the 2500 word count (+ or - 10%) thus she suggested I needed to expand my research. Following this advice, I decided to change the aim and structure of my essay to include other topics relating to “cuts”; such as finance, medical practices and the creative arts.
As a part of our second mini-task, I then structured my PowerPoint slides around the different topics, which was relatively straight forward.
As part of the Powerpoint mini task, I had to find five sources to get me started. Upon deciding what my topics were, I immediately began to conduct research on a variety of sources and authors. I immediately began to write notes and observations on my findings, which continued on for a few weeks. I gradually started to arrange my draft notes and observations into the appropriate sections as outlined in my PowerPoint task.
Simultaneously, I was taking part in Zoom calls with my theory tutor for tutorial support and advice on my work. Her main criticism was that my work was looking more like a Literature Review, as I was not implementing my own analysis and critique. I found this element of the task difficult as I had completed a lot of research, finding it comparatively easy to describe, however, analysis of the authors I found more challenging.
Following the tutorials, I spent quite a lot of time going back through my draft writing in order to add my own opinion and analysis of the research. At this point my draft word count was just under the 10% of the recommended limit, and I was struggling to write the words needed to wrap up my findings.
It was at this point that I re-read my draft and decided to alter my question. I changed the order of the question to bring more attention to how the topic of “cuts” affected the life of creatives; my original question was geared more to the effects of cuts on general society, whereas I wanted the focus to be more on how cuts affected the lives of creatives. To support the narrative, I chose to look up some statistics that indicated the depth of how social crises affected creatives and the other was regarding the growing popularity of film editing software as well as the increased value of post-production in film and TV. This statistical data, coupled with my conclusion, completed my word count.
Overall, I felt that the topic was interesting, however, I could have written more commentary on my topic and there were a few sections I had to curtail because of time constraints, such as the medical aspect of cuts.
Because I had just completed a Literature Review for the assignment in the previous semester, I engaged in the same method of writing and gathering research, even though this was different to how an essay is meant to be written. I did not fully address this issue until about half way through the essay. The time I spent correcting the essay, to be less like a Literature Review, could have been spent making more interesting points.
At the beginning of the correction process, I felt apprehensive about my ability to change course at this late stage, however, following weeks of review and discussion with tutors and family, my feelings became more positive. As I reviewed my writing and slowly changed the language of my text to better fit an essay rather than a Literature Review, I was able to make these amendments in a reasonable timeframe and construct an essay I felt met the standards of the assignment brief.
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