The Nature and Purpose of Research

The Nature and Purpose and Research

Primary Research/ Self-generated Research 

This is is the type of research you conduct yourself, in a sense directive research, examples include interviews, questionaires, surveys. I researched around the college for participants to interview for our documentary on young people and their apathy to politics. I had an advantage while collecting induviduals for our interviews because I study AS politics, therefore other students in my class were effectivly significant for the role of being interviewed. Additionally I was able to interview my actual politics teacher for an experienced look on the subject. Another example of primary research I engaged in was a survey to ask other if they would be interested participating in the documentary and also questioning them on their interest in politics, so that we were able to pick and chose a range of people that were interested in politics and those that were not. Primary research is key in the media industry, being a researcher is an actual job role, for example if you were planning to make a rom-com (romantic comedy) then you might want to research when the best time to release this film might be, due to the reviews and when the most cinema tickets are sold for a rom-com and what time of year that might be. You could achieve this by creating your own questionnaire and promoting it on twitter and tag local cinemas or local film clubs and get their views, collecting data through effective networks.

Here is an example of the questions in my survey.

Secondary Research 

This type of research is where another induvidual has already produced the research for you to extract the information, arguably an indirect form of research, examples include reference-based books, journals, the internet, databases, material ratings and especially government statistics in our case of our documentary based around politics. I produced a research post gathering our information that we had collected into one document to explain where we got our information from and how we were to use it. For example I used a youtube clip that was based around a similar idea of how we wanted to present our documentary, by interviewing a range of different people and asking them firstly factual questions about politics and then diving into if they were interested in politics or not and why. I also looked into what political parties do for the younger generation I did this by researching onto their actual sites via the internet, I looked into the database of the Labour party and the section aimed at young people and that is where I found the information.

 I also looked into government statistics to grasp hard evidence that would back up an argument within the documentary, also using the web to look onto public body websites referencing government evidence of young peoples interest in politics. Secondary research proves effective in the media industry because when you are given a task you may have to look up on the internet and research how to complete the task or something that could help you with the tasks, even using books from a library, however in the media industry it is usually the internet that proves most useful.

(link for figure 5 -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ic4JkAx5pc)

Research on policies from Labour

Quantitative Research 

This type of research is a data-led one, where it is includes opinions from what people think from a numerical/ statistical point of view, examples like programme reviews, hits on a website or sales on DVD's and CD's. The type of quantitative research I took part in was an opinion poll showing at the age where people are most interested in politics, I used this to reinforce the idea that young people are not interested in politics and that older people are more involved. Here are examples from my documentary. This is an important way to research if you are looking for facts and figures and in the media industry this can be effective when you are calculating ratings of films or viewing figures. Usually presented best in a table or a chart to show calculations in a simplified form to then present your findings, and also evaluating that research to see what the statistics show. 

(7) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26271935) 

(link for figure 6 - http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__
data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file
/0019/16093/youngpplvoting_6597-6188__E__N__S__W__.pdf)

Qualitative Research

This type of research is where the opinions of people is more in-depth and not so statistical, more about the individual feedback then the broad opinion. Examples include Film reviews, Game reviews, attitudes to media products, responses to advertising campaigns and responses to news coverage. An example from my research could be the questionnaire I conducted because part of that lets the answer be written in a text box if they wanted to give a more detailed reply. This is important to be used in the media industry because this is useful for companies who need to access the information easily and quickly, this works out well for the film industries when they ask people coming out of the cinema weather they thought the film was any good.

Survey Monkey

Additionally the interviews I conducted for my documentary could be classed as Qualitative research as the answer was a persons opinion in depth and detailed, even though it was after my documentary was made, an interview would be a successful way to collect research and information for a media production you are making.




Data Gathering Agencies 

B.A.R.B is an example of a broadcasting agency, it is the organisation that works with TV ratings and audience measurements, researching and giving information to the public domain to show what's popular and what's not and to show reviews of what people like when watching a broadcast.

http://www.barb.co.uk/ - example of what kind of figures are shown for TV ratings.

Another data gathering agency is IMDB, it is a large collection of entertainment information, including predominantly movies and TV programmes and who creates them. In depth detail into how and where the films are made and why they are made, including who stars in them all the way down to who produces the audio and lighting. IMDB started by a group of movie fans that indulged themselves into the findings behind movies and the deep detail into them. in a sense a site 'created by movie fans, for movie fans' - Quoted from - IMDB

Front page of the website, advertising new movie trailers.

An Additional data gathering agency is Box Office Mojo. 'Box Office Mojo is an online movie publication and box office reporting service. our purpose is to illuminate the movies through the integration of art and business. Based in Burbank, California, we produce news, analysis and the most comprehensive box office tracking available online' They also have an interesting copyright policy, you are welcome to use less than 20 names/titles of filmography on non commercial websites, magazines and information boards as long as your referenced the source you got the information from.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/

Purpose of Research

Audience and Market Research:
There are many ways to conduct audience and market research in order to know how to target your media product and who to target it to, here are a few examples of ways you can research. Geo-demographics is how opinions and views can be different based on where the individual lives, for example a 19 year old boy living in Norfolk will have different views and opinions from a 19 year old boy who lives in London. Demographics is more about the different views and opinions of those in different social classes.

Here is an example of Geo-demographics in relation to violence profiles in certain areas.

Here is an example of a demographic chart, you can target specific areas of social classes, for example you could aim a job advert for specifically skilled manual workers and therefore post in an area where C2 working class would see it. 

An example of audience and market research I conducted was through the questionnaire on survey monkey,  asking first if the responded is a male/ female, to see if the results show that there is a difference in interests between sexes, as politics is known from the past and arguably the current that it is predominantly males that have a interest and take part in politics. Additionally there is a question on age as it is argued that older people are more interested in politics and this is where the idea for a documentary comes about.

Here is the feedback from question 1 on gender 

From the results we can see it is predominantly males that had an interest in taking part in the survey seeing as it was about politics, this is how we received our market research and incorporated this into our documentary by interviewing equally males and females. 

Here is the feedback from the age on question 2.

The age responses is what I predicted as I wanted to target the young audience and see if they are responsive to the survey and as we can see from the results, we can see that it was that age range that was interested in taking part. This is why we interviewed people of this age range to make it compatible with the results we gained from this survey.

Here is the feedback for question 5.

Here we can conclude the first two questions effected this question about interest, showing it was mainly males who took part in the survey and seeing that most of the respondents do have an interest in politics, therefore could argue it is mostly males who are interested. Also we can see that the idea of our documentary about young peoples apathy to politics is that there is an interest there, this was effective because we had to incorporate this into the interview questions we asked and how we produced our documentary.




Production Research

This section will include the pre-production paperwork that we had to research in order to set up and film the documentary. Personnel included me and my documentary partner going round our college and asking students if they would like to take part, however the responses were not as successful as we had hoped for, therefore we asked those in our class if they would be interested in being interviewed about politics and we had more of a positive response. Additionally I study politics which means it was easier for me to get hold of a few politics students and also my politics teacher to comment on the subject as he teaches young people on politics and has an understanding of the attitudes towards it as a subject. Next we had to plan shots, as mostly all of our documentary was based on interviews there was a lot of opportunity for free cam and unplanned shots, however we thought it would add structure if we did plan some potential shots that we could use. When the interviewing was taking place it was a shot of just the respondent, it did not include me asking the questions as I had an idea how I wanted to edit in a montage way, where the question is a title on the footage so the audience understands how they are reacting and to what question. This includes the storyboards and planning scripts as at the beginning I wanted to introduce what the documentary is about and inform the audience of what will be covered. Another task I had to do was produce a location release to have the permission to film onsite of college, and also to asses where we were filming to make sure there was no major risks and to analyse if the space was suitable to camera use. Lastly the production scheduled was the last piece of pre- production work we had to do, however we had to redo this as we didn't know exactly when we would start filming and when we would finish until we received the feedback from the interviews, after we received the interview papers back we could then plan the production and how long it will take.

Example of the personnel sheets. 

This is the recce evaluation that I conducted before we knew the exact locations we were using, I assessed the space that we could have used and the one of the college front we did end up actually using in the documentary. 

Production Schedule  

This is our 3MW documentary that we produced.