Dissertation: Tutorial Feedback & Structural Update

Welcome Back!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! After a long 4 months off for summer it's time to get straight back into work - I won't bother to bore you about what I done over summer so instead it's time to dive straight back into working on my dissertation.

Tutorial Feedback & What to do next

So after returning back for my third and final year at university, the first couple of weeks consisted of a tutorial regarding progress and questions on our dissertation, including going through the feedback we received for our dissertation proposal. Below is the feedback which I received from my proposal, which myself and my course leader, Kath, recapped on what the feedback was.


As well as this, I then asked Kath a number of questions regarding planning for my dissertation. I then jotted down notes on what my next steps to are, plus general feedback, which you can see below:

Change in Example

Kath advised NOT to use 2 documentary films (Blackfish and Religious), as the dissertation must focus specifically on television instead of film. In addition, we both came to an agreement that my dissertation would be more balanced and effective to use an example which acts for documentaries - something which promotes the benefits and likeliness of documentaries instead of an example which may seem that documentaries are instead controversial and disadvantageous. This then led to a conclusion of using another nature documentary - something to compare against Blackfish, however one which is made to gratify documentaries. Therefore, I have decided to choose a David Attenborough documentary, which will be soon researched as to which documentary to use.

Better Analysis on the Evolution of Documentaries 

My feedback also mentioned to include an in depth evaluation of the documentary genre as a whole - how the nature and form has evolved over recent years in context with postmodernism. This will include an analysis of the conventions of documentaries (which will be explored in chapter 3) including showing the opposition between traditional documentaries such as David Attenborough's nature documentaries, against modern non-traditional documentaries like Benefits Street. Thus, this will draw to a conclusion showing how modern documentaries now operate with a film narrative (this will all be researched and shown on my blog).

Other feedback which was noted and what research to do next is:

- Kath mentioned to read Fredric Jameson Culture on laid capitalism' to help contrast against Marxist theory by introducing postmodernism
- To use Google Scholar to find critical reviews to help back up points made regarding criticism and controversy of my chosen examples
- Introducing the theme of socio-economic audiences into depth. As I have explored how capitalism can create different audiences, Kath mentioned to research more into audience cultural needs - what the current cultural needs are and how audiences connect to documentaries.
- Better analysis of semiotics. This can be be done by researching books such as Daniel Chandler 'Semiotics' and Roland Barthes 'Image, Music & Text'.

Now that I've updated myself on my dissertation and noted what is needed to be done next, I will begin to research more into documentaries and to find which example to use to replace Religious.