Week 10
Researching an event/trend/movement of the 20th century and collecting images, key facts, the impact of it on wider society and how the moment is reflected in performance genres.
This week's independent project for Contextual Studies was to collect information about a 20th century event/trend and to bring it to the session next week. We were asked to get together images, key facts, the impact this movement has had on wider society and to do research into whether or not it has been reflected in performance genres since or contemporary to the event.
My project is about the colour, application and abandonment of Mountbatten pink, which was used for a short period during the Second World War as a form of camouflage for Naval Ships. I decided to research this as I'm not overly familiar with military history and this worked well because I was getting to learn about something entirely new.
I started by researching the history of the colour using nonfiction books that I already owned and by accessing and exploring the online databases that are linked with the NTU Library. (During the online session, we were introduced to these systems — I thought it was appropriate to try them out.) I was able to find and research into the history of the colour as well as its applications in film and TV using these sources and other online magazines and journals, such as Cabinet Magazine and model-making kit companies like Deans Marine.
To improve my work, I could have gone and done some primary research into Mountbatten pink — however, many of those ships were repainted the standard battleship grey of the war after the trend; many others were destroyed. Overall, I'm pleased with my final result: it allowed me to push and develop my research skills as well as my reference and citation skills. I decided to put together a PowerPoint about my findings, which can be seen below and has been submitted to the DFSS Contextual Studies Dropbox.
