Close Readings

Ever since high school, I have been told to always use academic sources for any paper but never taught until college how to properly close read an academic source. Most times I’m skimming readings and only retaining most of the information. While reading the two sources I found, I was focusing on finding arguments and evidence that pertained to my thesis topic and looking past the fluff in the sources. I have learned that academic sources are structured in an organized way with sub-topics. Finding important information is easier with academic sources than a website. 

From research methods, I have learned how to recognize citation formats and what type of formats are best suited for certain types of papers. I have also formed the habit of looking over the citations to see where the author found their information and possibly visit some of their sources. The two academic sources I found were both on the topic of digital film restoration and both used interviews as their main source of information. I found that a lot of quality information came from the interviews since it is straight from the source and not another academic article. One source interviewed multiple archives in Europe to compare restoration techniques. The other source interviewed a restoration technician on his background in film. I ended up getting better information from the source that interviewed the technician. His stories were more personable and interesting, he told details about movie studios that aren't normally mentioned such as how they used to store their films; in a storage room with a hole in the roof and no temperature and humidity control. I find that interviews have less dry information than other types of research methodologies. 

TURCI, ARIANNA. "The use of Digital Restoration within European Film Archives: A Case Study." The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 6, no. 1 (2006): 111-124.

Belton, John. "Getting it Right: Robert Harris on Colour Restoration." Film History: An International Journal 12.4 (2000): 393-409. ProQuest. Web. 10 Oct. 2017.