The Nature and Purposes of Research in the Creative Media Industries

Primary Research

Primary Research is any research that you have conducted yourself, for example in this project I completed primary research by creating a Survey/Questionnaire. By doing this I was able to question to public about how I would produce my documentary, this meant that I could find out what would gain more or less views. Some examples that I didn't conduct during Pre-Production are Interviews, Focus Groups, Forums and Internet Forums. I chose to only complete a survey as this was a quick and simple method, that would allow me to gain results quickly. 

• For my documentary I completed a Survey Monkey, I was then able to send the link out to friends and family who were able to complete the questions. Survey Monkey allowed me to analyse the results without having to complete any excel files.
• Whilst completing the PG Tips advert, I completed a survey with the rest of my group and sent that to the rest of the class. Although for this survey we sent it out after the viewer had watched the documentary, this meant that we could receive conducted feedback. 

Secondary Research

Secondary Resarch is any research that you have taken from a book or website. A few more examples of this type of research are Newspapers, CDs and Documentaries etc. I found this way much easier than Primary as I knew what I was going to be conducting and could gain the information that I wanted to hear. When researching Scouting I looked into how Cubs first started, I also looked at how the uniform is put together and finally an article that I found in the Newspaper. The Article was about Bear Grylls, when he came down to Great Yarmouth to meet many of the Cubs, I found this useful as it showed that Cubs is relatable to anyone who knows about Bear Grylls. 
Whilst completing the Depict short we had to watch many different shorts that meant and analyse them. That meant that we were able to see what Depict liked and could aim ourselves towards something that the target audience was looking for. 
PG Tips worked a little differently as we were given the option to choose a company that was owned by Unilever, so to find the company we first had to research them and then decide if that was what we wanted to redesign. Once we had conducted the secondary research we then had to present it to the rest of the class, using Prezi.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative Research is conducted by using statistics or figures. By doing this you're able to gain averages, this helps you to understand how popular one thing is in comparison to others. For example by looking at youtube view count you're able to tell how popular a video is, the view count may also tell you that the video is more relatable to your chosen subject. When researching for my documentary I looked into TV Schedules and genre popularity, the genre told me that many people enjoyed watching documentaries and in most cases documentaries took up prime time television.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research is conducted from reviews and opinions from different people, for example film reviews, game reviews and attitudes to media production. The research would be produced whilst reading different opinions and reviews, by doing this you're able to gain your own understanding of what people think. Often reviews can be very critical this can majorly effect people views on the item that has been written about. I found it difficult to conduct Qualitative research as my documentary is one of the first to be made about the chosen subject, so reading previous reviews from other documentaries similar to mine was difficult. 

Data Gathering Agencies

BARB standards for Broadcasters Audience Research Board, this website shows statistics on the highest viewed genres and titles. The website allows you to choose a channel and find out what its most viewed TV show is, you're also able to find the top ten viewed programmes of the week. IMDB is another website that uses statistics to shows its viewers whats popular and whats not, its helps for viewer to decide whether to watch a film or not although the views are created by the general public rather than a team that conduct the results. By having the reviews straight from the public the reader becomes much more relatable, as they can compare. Not only does IMDB show reviews and star ratings but it also shows what actors are in the program/film, this may help the public to decide whether to watch it due to the actor. There is plenty of information on IMDB ranging from grossing value to the storyline. 

Audience And Market Research

As I haven't yet posted my video on Youtube I'm unable to discuss the audience data, although I'm able to conclude that there were 2 females that completed my survey and 9 males. Although this is very gender bias, I found it very difficult to gain the opinions from females that would answer my Survey. This also shows the demographics in my clip, as I used mainly males to complete my survey, this may show a little bit of bias when analysing the data. By looking at the results from my survey monkey I was able to complete some changes to do with Audience Awareness, for example I ensured that the questions I asked the leaders were suitable and related to the chosen subject. When editing I found that some of the clips worked best with just the cubs playing around, this made the documentary much more raw and natural.  
The target audience for our PG Tips Advert was teenagers, we aimed to reach out to the teenagers of great britain. I feel that the audience data that emerged, show'd us that they enjoyed the TV Advert and would try to drink tea more often. 


Production Research

Is used to assist the developer when creating something new or developing, specifically you conduct this research to help understand characteristics of the genre/theme. It all depends what the clip is made for, for example we created a PG Tips Advert to advertise tea bags to the public. So that we had a strong knowledge for the product we decided to create a Prezi presentation that outlined all of the different aspects of PG Tips, this research helped to understand the product that we were advertising, when conducting the research we looked into demographics and target audience so that the advert would be beneficial.