Analyse Data

Analysis

Is the film accurate?

After reading the four books and analysing the online articles and then cross referencing them with the film I can begin to get a clearer idea of whether this film is accurate or not in its portrayal of the ship and its sinking. 

From a first viewing it can be seen that the facts correlate to the film which can largely be attributed not only to the great amount of research that went into this film but James Cameron (director, writer and producer of the films) personal obsession and love for the ship. The film took several years to plan as well as many more to shoot and the intense attention to detail by Cameron suggests to me this film will be highly accurate.

The only factor weighing down on this judgement is the fact that it was made by Hollywood, although they may care for accuracy they care more for money and would have wanted to make sure this film was a crowd pleasing and a cinematic triumph that looked visually stunning. Therefore they may have forced Cameron to change details of the film, affecting its accuracy, merely because they wanted to ensure the film was appealing to audiences and not too absorbed in historical facts and figures.

Having watched the film it does appear in whole that Cameron stuck religiously to the facts and took pride in creating a film as close to the truth as possible, in my essay I will go into further details about specific scenes as well as general facts about the boat and the people on it.

Watching the film

Titanic

1997

Last night I set aside 3 hours to re-watch the 1997 classic film Titanic, making notes throughout about the film about certain characters, settings, events and dialogue I can now compare it with facts I have collected about the sinking and start to gauge a real idea as to how accurate this film is.

Credibility of sources

Sources

usefulness?

Books

1) W.Owen, Headlines, 2010, Weldon Owen pty ltd, Australia (secondary source) 
- Weldon Owen creates high-quality illustrated children's non-fiction and family reference books for the international co-edition market. It is part of the Bonnier Publishing Ltd.
- Founded in 1984, Weldon Owen has sold over 80 million books, in over 40 countries and in more than 25 languages. For thirty years it has been one of the leading players in the international co-edition market and is valued by its publishing partners for its uncompromising quality and excellence in editorial and design.

Although this book provides clear information it is brief, condensed and aimed at much younger audiences meaning facts a could be overlooked and only interesting statistics included to entertain audiences better. Therefore anything I learn from this book may not be as useful as I can't trust that the information is valid as it may be twisted to construct a much more dramatic sequence of events then actually occurred.

2) E.Marsh, James Cameron's Titanic, 2012, Harper Collins Publishers, New York (secondary source)
With a greater insight into the film this book us useful as its highly accurate, with facts and figures about the film taken directly from the planning notes and James Cameron himself (the man behind the film). This helps educate me more about the film and spot the things I may have missed and provide background information on scenes, costumes, settings and characters I may have not noticed when watching the film. Due to its high accuracy its very useful to use in my essay.

3) B.Riffenburgh, The story of Titanic, 2011, Sevenoaks, London (contains primary sources)
As a historian from the university of Cambridge he has an impressive background for his knowledge but as he focuses on such a wide variety of historical events its hard to judge the accuracy of the book. His books have been critically acclaimed though suggesting he is someone who understands the topics he writes about and therefore the content could be useful as I can trust the author.

4) M.Swift, Titanic the memorabilia collection, 2012, Igloo books ltd, Northampton (contains primary sources)
I could find very little information about this author suggesting he doesn't have the greatest credibility and therefore any information I find from his books may not be useful as I can't assure the book is accurate.

Online
1) http://www.history.com/topics/titanic (secondary source)

This website had great historical content and is rich in facts, as a reliable site I can trust the content is therefore accurate and useful.

2) http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/titanic.htm (primary source)

As an eyewitness account from the time it can be presumed to be accurate as it's a primary source but the persons memory or judgement may affect its credibility meaning I cant trust it as much.

3) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/lists/Titanic-40-fascinating-facts/ (secondary source)
Lots of useful facts published in a credible newspaper meaning they are likely to be accurate making the source useful.

Collecting Info (websites)

Information

websites

In this modern age another easy way to collect a large range of information is through articles online, history websites are particularly useful but as with any information collected the purpose of the source must be examined to determine its usefulness. Never the less I can use online articles and websites to gather more facts and statistics.

1) http://www.history.com/topics/titanic

This article provides great depths of detail about the creation and sinking of the ship as well as many pictures and a few videos that help build a better picture of Titanic and what happened the night it sank.

2) http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/titanic.htm

This article is different in the sense it is an eye witness report, this could be more useful as it gives us the sinking of the ship from a persons point of view who was there, just like what the film attempts to do. On the other hand this could be less useful as shock and memory could affect their judgement when retelling this story.

3) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/lists/Titanic-40-fascinating-facts/

Again this is slightly different but rather because it lays out the facts without fancy words surrounding them, its helpful in providing me with clear facts that I can cross reference with the film but also has a lot of unnecessary information that although is interesting isn't relevant to the time frame of the film as it focuses more on the ships creation. 

Collecting information (books)

Information 

books

First of all I will retrieve information from books which I can then cross reference with the film at a later date, as one of the most interesting events of the 20th century the sinking of Titanic in 1912 is something I have a personal interest in and therefore have several books that I can use to gather facts.

1) W.Owen, Headlines, 2010, Weldon Owen pty ltd, Australia  

This book is slightly more broad than the others as it focuses on 6 other major historical events from the 20th century but it should still be helpful in providing me with more knowledge on the sinking of the Titanic. 

2) E.Marsh, James Cameron's Titanic, 2012, Harper Collins Publishers, New York

 This is the most specific book of all of my research facilities, it focuses exclusively on the film and should help provide information about details of the film itself that I can compare with other historical textbooks.

3) B.Riffenburgh, The story of Titanic, 2011, Sevenoaks, London

This book gives many specifics of the ship from its construction to its voyage to its ultimate demise, the authors collaboration with many other historians helps improves its usefulness. This will be helpful to understand the more technical side of the ships sinking and correlate it to what is portrayed in the film and assess its accuracy.

4) M.Swift, Titanic the memorabilia collection, 2012, Igloo books ltd, Northampton

This books focuses much more on the peoples side of the story, the notable passengers on board the ship, the crew as well as mentioning the construction, and focuses on the voyage itself and the specifics of the sinking.

By using all four of these books I have many different aspects of the Titanic covered, from the facts and statistics behind its construction to the peoples side of the sinking and more in depth knowledge of the film itself. Using all these books should help provide me with an array of facts which I can then use to judge the accuracy of the film.

Essay plan

Introduction: outline what my essay is on, introduce James Cameron and the film Titanic, discuss some of the findings online, what other people think, what you're going to look at to come to your decision of whether it is or not accurate.

Paragraph 1: small things that are wrong with the film, get them over and done with, affect the accuracy of the film? maybe slightly

Paragraph 2: focus on the fictional characters/love story - added to entice audiences, does that mean we can be more accurate with the sinking as we have something interesting to watch or does it simply lead to inaccuracies as Cameron gets too carried away with the Hollywood side of things?

Paragraph 3: reference to specific scenes which are supposedly accurate, back up with facts and figures

Paragraph 4: talk about the accuracy of the ship itself, tie in how Cameron has a passion for the Titanic and spent many years researching it

Conclusion: conclude whether the small inaccuracies are important, the ship is accurate are the characters? does Hollywood twist the story too much? can we trust what we see on the screen? does Cameron present it accurately?

By sticking to this rough draft I should be able to cover all the factors I want to in this essay in a organised, structured fashion and know what I need to write about in each section. I can organise my research so I can easily access it for each paragraph that I need it for.

Historians view - do they think its accurate?

As I research into the historical event and watch the film for myself I am curious as to what other people have found about the films accuracy. Having read many articles online the general consensus seems to be that the films is largely accurate in the way the ship is physically presented and how it sank but the characters themselves lack historical accuracy. 

There are many articles online that point out the more specific, tiny faults with the movie like the fact when talking to Rose Jack mentions a man made lake that has not been created yet (Lake Wissotta made in 1917). There are many of these small faults which decrease its accuracy but that is more to do with the time period the film is set in and the lack of research about it rather than the actual disaster itself.

The larger, more important faults are to do with characters, many are misrepresented or tweaked for dramatic effect and therefore affect the accuracy of the film. In my essay I will probably focus on this as well as mentioning specific scenes which are accurate or not within the film, this way I can focus on the film as a whole as well as individual scenes in it.