Research methods & techniquesAn introduction to

• Primary• Secondary

• Quantitative• Qualitative

Today

You will conduct primary research for your screenplay using survey monkey

Screen Writing

Why do we research?To gather information that

• influences our creative ideas• Identifies our audience• Affects our planning

• Affects our production

In screen writing

A good script is built on great research

Like every other part of film & TV screen writing involves research.

Lots & lots of research….

What are the 2 different research methods?

1. Primary research

2. Secondary research

Primary Research

What do we mean by primary research?

Primary Research

Information that doesn’t already exist somewhere else

ie/ we find it out ourselves

Primary Research

What different techniques can we use when conducting primary research?

Primary Research

What different techniques can we use when conducting primary research?

• Surveys• Questionnaires• 1 on 1 interviews• Focus groups

Primary Research

What are the strengths of primary research?

Primary Research

What are the strengths of primary research?

• Tailor the questions to find out the answers you need

• Get in depth answers • Original information so arguably more

reliable

Primary Research

What are the weaknesses of primary research?

Primary Research

What are the weaknesses of primary research?

• Time consuming (more stages to process)• Expensive (staff costs)

Secondary Research

What do we mean by secondary research?

Secondary ResearchExisting information which has been created

by someone else.

Secondary Research

What are the strengths of secondary research?

Secondary Research

What are the strengths of secondary research?

• Cheap (less staff, easier process to manage, less travelling)

• Abundance of data available on the internet

Secondary Research

What are the weaknesses of secondary research?

Secondary Research

What are the weaknesses of secondary research?

• May not answer your specific questions• Can be time consuming finding information• Verifying someone elses research is

difficult (less reliable)

Secondary Research

What different techniques can we use when conducting secondary research?

Secondary Research

What different techniques can we use when conducting secondary research?

• Internet search• Newspaper / existing journalism• Archive footage• Reference books

Quantitative versus Qualitative questioning

There are 2 types of ‘data’ (ie. Information) we can get back from our research:

• Quantitative

• Qualitative

Qualitative data

Eg. If we asked the question What did you like or dislike about the film ‘Chappie’?

I liked how the film made me question what the human soul is and how it asked a lot of important questions about religion and rebirth. The effects were good, but the story and subtext were better.

Qualitative data gives us an in depth opinion back.

Quantitative data

Quantitative data gives us a measure of what people think, in a statistical or numerical way.

Eg. If we asked the question

Did you like the film ‘Chappie’? YES or NO (circle your answer)

YES NO

Quantitative versus Qualitative questioning

Which gives us a more useful answer for deep analysis of peoples reactions to our subject?

Quantitative versus Qualitative questioning

Which is easier to present in a graphical, simple way?

Quantitative data

Gives us simple answers (and a simplified version of what people think) meaning it is easy to put into graphs and charts

It shows us what people think about a subject but doesn’t allow us to understand why they think that.

Quantitative dataGives us in depth answers which allow us to understand our audiences reactions, but it is hard to put these complex results into graphs and charts

It shows us what people think about a subject but doesn’t allow us to understand why they think that.

Making a good survey

1. Understand who your audience are.

What do we need to know about our audience?• Age• Gender• Occupation • Location

What type of question would be best to get this data? Quantitative or qualitative?

For exampleNAME _________________AGE 16 – 18

19 – 25 25 – 30 30 – 50 50 – 6565+

GENDER MALE FEMALEPREFER NOT TO SAY

OCCUPATION ________________

Making a good survey

2. Understand what questions you need answering

Eg. If you wanted to know if people would go to see your film based on its idea alone, what could you ask?

Making a good survey

3. Get a large enough sample of participants to make it useful.

If you ask 20 people, and 19 of them are teenagers your data will obviously state that teenagers are your main market, when in fact this is probably not true.

Ask a range of different people, of different ages, genders and occupations to get a varied, reliable sample.

Task 1

Working in pairs, come up with a list of ten questions you could ask to find out useful information about peoples reactions to your screenplay idea.

Task 2

Using the link on moodle create a survey-monkey survey which seeks to answer those questions.

Send the survey out via social media, email and any other means to a large, varied sample.