Benjamin Crowson Film and TV Blog

Nature and purposes of research

Primary research is research that you collect yourself, by doing things like surveys ,interviews and questionnaires for example. Its often called field research as people actually go out into the 'field' and conduct it themselves to get the most reliable information as possible. One major advantage of primary research is that is very specific and only focuses on one issue or problem so all effort is being put into obtaining related information. For my own primary research I conducted a questionnaire to found out people thoughts, opinion , feedback first hand which is essential for knowing who to advertise for. A specific example from the professional industry would be a test screening an example of this would the screening of the film A Quiet Place in which the audience laughed at the first viewing of this as the production was not finished which shows that changes always need to be made

Primary Research

Secondary research is where you use research that has already been collected by someone else. This can include going on sites like Wikipedia and nit picking information and using it for yourself from someone who has already completed the research. It could also be taken from other places not just the internet but from books from a library , newspaper or just word of mouth.The secondary research I conducted was research and the creation of two prezis which are basically power points which in form the audience of the product I looked into in this case on Lyons tea and a TV advert analysis of a Mercedes. An industry example of this would be if you were going to make a documentary you would need the information about it , at the moment the BBC is offering job roles to find this information this would be them conducting secondary research.

Qualitative research is exploratory research focuses on evaluating and looking for more in depth responses rather than just the amount of data, it makes it so you can go more personal and collect information closer to home. common uses of this method are things like group discussions and participant observations.The questionnaire was helpful in this respect as they gave there opinions and told us hat they thought about it which can allow us to make changes or know id we are doing it right.From the picture below the qualitative part would be the response that have detail and say an opinion or view rather than just yes or no generic answers.

An industry example of this kind of data would be a film review like the one seen below as it is getting someone opinion and feedback in what they thought about the film or subject which especially if it is from a highly rated critic means a lot.

Quantitative research is research focusing on a numerical response and results. Its generalizes all data from a large pool of people and puts it together so you get an overall view of opinion and behavior for example. This kind of data is made from a bunch of different sources like surveys, face to face and online polls.An industry example of this would be a film rating rather than a review so just a base score rather than an actual explained reason like in the picture above in which toy story 4 is rated 3/5 stars. My own example of this would be my questionnaire again as im collecting a wide range of just yes or no answers in some cases which just gives me a generic reflective view of whether people enjoyed the advert or not.

Data gathering agencies include the BARB which stands for the Broadcasters Audience Research Board, it is an organisation which compiles audience measurement and TV ratings in the UK. They work in order to classify the age ratings of shows, films and channels. Other TV watching platforms carry there research in different ways like Netflix collect there own meta data and IMBD which does so by collecting in percentages of people who liked or disliked the viewing. For example the picture below shows a collection of results within a week period from the barb which can tell you most to least popular in this case TV programs which is obviously very

useful data. While IMBD for instance doesn't rate on the amount watched but on peoples ratings from 1-1- in which they have compiled a database of millions of movies and TV programmes and have ratings and reviews for everyone.

Audience and market research allows us to find the target audiences through a variety of different forms of research which can be helpful in finding the : age , gender, race as well as the demographics and psycho graphics. Audience research primarily focuses on peoples preferences, knowledge and behavior. Market research focuses more on the information of other products on the market at the time that are similar and that could potentially take o prevent customers from getting there own product. Test screening is also away which helps to inform and find out what you need to know with the target audience that you are targeting, like in the picture below ET was screen tested in which he died in it but that not what people wanted so it was changed. My own example of audience and market research is my re branding prezi in which i had to look at current target audience and re brand it to a new one which is a good thing to look into as you find out what different audiences want and expect.

Production research is all about knowing your own product and making sure you have insight into what you're doing with the product. Within the media industry these are things that include personnel, costs, locations for shooting and various other things, all of which are essential for production. My own research I've done for this include location recces and releases, storyboards and a whole other manner of different things.

An industry example of this would be like above where Danny Boyle loved the location of gorleston for the recording of the film yesterday in which someone had to go out and scout for it. My own research as seen below contains a different number of pre-production which I had to do to get the finished product.

Research Dossier

Primary Research

Using these questionnaires (above) allowed us to get a better understanding of our own age rand and the primary audience that we were going for, this was essential for knowing who to advertise for. This good because its primary information that I have collected myself , I had to do this task for college and luckily my main target audience was all around me so not only was it good information but it was also easy to obtain. Here are two examples of my documentary below

from the couple of interviews I did for my 3MW task about the impact of social media on mental health. We asked them questions in a controlled environment, this is a very good and clear primary source as it was directly taken from the people and being recorded by us straight away. Although as this is edited this could be seen as biased we tried to have most neutral outlook fro it as we didn't have any expectations going into it as well as partaking in the documentary ourselves to connect more with the interviewees and there answers. The reason I did this is because it is much more entertaining to watch people give the information themselves and and the audience can interact and see how they are feeling rather than just watching someone read off some information, as well as believe ability as the viewer gets to see it from the direct source.

Above is my pre-production for my 3MW documentary and this is an example of Primary Research. Especially things within like location recces and releases, this is because like for the location recces for example we had to go out and survey these areas on our own. This was conducted on our lonesome and didn't have any outside sources affecting anything. The reason I did this is because it is a vital piece of legal work which is needed in order to continue with the production.

This is my primary research which I did for the documentary task in which I asked people a few questions to get more insight into the world of social media and what they think about. As I got this myself and from people I know , I know that it is trustworthy and the best type of research I could collect. The reason I did this is because I needed to find out what my target audience thought about the subject I was doing my documentary on in order to complete the task with the best information.

Secondary Research

Above is the prezi I used for my re-brand a product task and it shows clear examples of secondary research. I had to research about the brand and Unilever and these all came from secondary sources, such as their website, Wikipedia and I also obtained information from the BARB website when looking at viewing figures. Although Wikipedia can be edited by the public and can be unrealiable it is more useful that not as it is checked regularly. For this task I had too use other people secondary research Like the barb to find out important information like viewing times for example which are key if you want to maximize the amount of viewers for your specific production.

Above is my research dossier for my screenplay project, this is a good example of secondary research as I had to go online and found out about different screenplay writing competitions which helped give insight in what sort of things were professional and what you had to do to get your work submitted in the real world. As well as researching about screenplay that people have made in different ways such as being drawn from there past or just from there imagination. I did this in order to find out more information on the task I had been set in which I went on different websites an companies which told me a lot about screenplays, there format and competitions ext.

This is my last source of secondary information which I thought was very helpful in the creation of my documentary as I got to research and watch 3 minute documentaries other have made and use them to create an idea for my own. As well as insight to see that the industry still helps to support new creators as they fund them and help them to create these.This allowed be to see the structure of something that I would be making as well as somethng I could take ideas from or com-are to my own in the future.