Executive Summary - From Then Till Now - January '13

I have come a long way in my project since the start of semester one. I've managed to gain a firm understanding of the route I wish to take as to what it is I want to research, what is valuable information to research and how I propose to carry out the practical side to my research.

My blog began with the ideas that I had for my project, what my initial concept was and how I wished to establish that concept. This moved from the study of motif in film to the more developed idea of studying an individual character theme within a film and then a theme that may be manipulated over time as the character changes. I established early on one of the most famous musical motifs of all time, the Jaws theme and how one knows the looming the danger of a presence before seeing one.

The next stage of my blog relates to my research proposal and more importantly the literature review. Around this time I was reading books, journals and articles and constantly keeping notes on related subjects as well as quotes and paraphrases in my notebook. Along with this I kept a log of important readings and how they may relate to my topic on this blog. This included a look at how music is used in film, psychological and emotive responses to music on a listener, the history of musical theme in opera, the limitations of film scoring, 'the eight functions of film music', the relation between music and film and a couple examples of experimentation in fields similar to my study such as the change of perception through music in a health and safety video and how children react to certain types of music.
Also linked to my research proposal is a run down of my aims and objectives as well as the methodology that I am going to use for my project.

The latter part of my blog focuses on pre production, my concept and development.

This began with establishing how it is that I am going to compose, what are the specific hardware and software that I am going to use as well as my initial ideas for chapters that may be included in my final dissertation.
As I began doing practical pre production work, I kept a log of each piece I worked on. This included a various theme variations and one example of 3 varying themes put to a short video clip that I uploaded to this blog. Each theme includes screenshots of the composition during the writing stages and the initial melody that I wrote to be manipulated.

Now I wish to further experiment with compositional ideas that directly relate to what it is that I'm proposing. I need to know the video source that I will be using for my final project and begin to develop a cue sheet for where I want themes to enter and disappear and begin to work on varying musical styles that may apply to the film clip.

I have also included a full bibliography and plan for semester 2.