The Nature and Purposes of Research Primary Research Primary research is any method of gaining information and opinions yourself, through developing surveys or asking people questions directly. This can also include recording observations, questioning a panel or interviewing people; the latter of which we conducted as research for our Mock Election documentary. In the media industry, primary research includes when a production company scouts for locations to film, or perhaps when making a documentary primary research includes the interviews conducted with participants. Within our documentary project, you can see some selected portions of our interviews with the election candidates – Joe Chapman and Carlos Carvalho – and Alex Spalding, who was organising the entire event we were filming. These interviews were mainly for gathering opinion, but also shaped our choice of shots when editing and provided a good portion of the documentary’s narrative. Additionally, during the pre-production stages Reuben and I attended many meetings with the candidates and Alex, sitting in the background and taking notes of what was said and plans being made. This was essential as it gave us the information we required to produce a production schedule and thus prepare to film at the relevant times. At these meetings we distributed talent release forms (pictured below) to the candidates which became our main source of primary research as we could now make contact with all of the necessary participants within the production. Secondary Research Secondary research is other gathered information which we have obtained from somebody or somewhere else. This can include books, internet sites, news sources, archives and much more. In the media industry, secondary research would include finding a book to adapt into a screenplay, or simply reading a script someone has proposed to be made into a film. Following production of the documentary, we also collected the results of the election, through a graph sheet provided to us by Alex to coincide with the primary research we collected whilst filming the announcement of the result.
Transcript
7/18/2019 The Nature and Purposes of Research 2.pdf
representation of the UK’s viewing habits. This allows broadcasters to know what
programmes their audience is enjoying and want to see more of, as well as – and probably
more importantly – what an audience doesn’t like. The IMDB website collects film and TV
show reviews in qualitative and quantitative form in order to provide potential viewers with
information on what other viewers though. Clips and trailers from films are also available on
IMDB in most cases. Box Office Mojo’s website provides data on the box office takings of
films on a daily basis. Whilst focusing on America, it is also possible to find UK Box Office
takings on a weekly basis. At the time of writing this, Avengers: Age of Ultron is number one,
taking over £15m.
Audience and Market Research
When developing a concept for a media product, it is always important to consider
who is going to be watching it. This means considering audience data, demographics, geo-
demographics, consumer behaviour and attitudes, and competition. Our audience and
market research was based around actually spending time with the candidates whilst filmingtheir campaigns and interviewing them.
A key objective of the production was that it motivated more young people to get
involved with politics. This meant spending time with young political activists would help us
identify what the benefits of being involved were. However, because of this objective we
realised our documentary needed to target young people who are not yet actively involved
in politics. This meant that when we edited the documentary we made sure it was not too
politically heavy - removing interview footage of
complicated explanations and instead prioritising
interesting dialogue sound-bites. We used a variety of
cutaways and at times made situations comical by use of
music, all to keep the documentary interesting. We
hoped this would create a level of intrigue, whereby
those not involved would have the desire to find out
more, thus achieving our main objective.
Production Research
Equally as important as audience research is production research, particularly in a
documentary format where you can potentially miss interesting and exciting moments if
you are not aware of when and where they are happening. Production research includesviability of the production, financing, technological capabilities, locations and personnel. For
our mock election production, as previously mentioned,
Reuben and myself attended several meetings with the
team who were organising and participating in the mock
election event. This gave us the ability to get to know
people through the talent release forms, as well as finding
out key dates when important events would be taking
place. From this we were able to produce a production
schedule and we consulted this daily to ensure we had
the required equipment and personnel available to us.
Cutaway to Labour
Party candidates
handing out leaflets
7/18/2019 The Nature and Purposes of Research 2.pdf
