Just before the end of the semester last year, we were briefed in on the contextual report which will be a 15000 word essay on the process of what I’ve learned and found out and how I did it along the way. I’m very glad I kept up these blog during the process so far as they will be super helpful for this.
One of the things Mike said whilst briefing this was to look back at the work I did for proposal and what that meant and what it means now. Am I still heading in the same direction as I was then or have a deviated? I understand the point in this work is the deviate and come back to somewhere near where you started, having gone on a journey of discovery. Well you can so that. Some people go off and never come back to the beginning.
But what I did think about my proposal was my motives for doing this work. I think because my proposal was based so much on the spacial transmedia study done by Rebecca Williams, I think I was in a mode where I was trying to prove the worth of studying theme parks to academia in general. Something that that book does a lot in the beginning. But the more I read and the more I learn, especially after reading John Hence’s book; Designing Disney, I feel like that might not be the best use of my time. I know this work is worth exploring and the more practical work I do the more it feels like that speaks for itself. It would be a lot more interesting to not spend my time proving this work is good and true and worth studying, and actually just get on with the practise of studying it.
I’ve read a lot in the last few weeks, about analysis, about the etymology of design and about disney so I’m still moving toward creating my own version of an analytical model. I’ve had from the start of this project a list of names of people I want to speak to who either work at or have worked at Imagineering, so I want to start reaching out to them. But I want to make sure I do that properly. I’ve been speaking to someone on reddit about trying to track down a 60 minute episode that featured on the Imagineering Story documentary, but having no luck and it turns out he worked at WDI in the 90’s as a graphic designer! So thats fortunate! I’ve asked if he’d be up for talking about it, so fingers crossed I can start that process soon.
I have some images to start on another poster, but I also need to spend time reading and work on this analytical model so need to prioritise.