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 documentarys 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.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative Research is data collected in a numerical form. In media this can include
film and programme ratings (e.g. 4/5 stars), viewing figures, box office/sales figures. In the
industry, you are likely to see quantitative data on news programmes, represented as
graphs and tables; such as the swing-o-meter during election coverage. The result of the
election is an example of some numerical information we collected, as described in the
section on secondary research. In editing, we also had to take note of the length of clips we
were cutting up to include, as it was part of the
brief for the documentary to be only three minutes
long. In addition, some of the notes recorded by
Reuben and me during the meetings with the
candidates and Alex are quantitative as they
included information regarding times where we
had to be somewhere to film and room numbers.

Qualitative Research

Quantitative research is, simply, not numerical data. Media qualitative research is
much more focused towards peoples opinions, thus mainly including various reviews and
responses through written work or televised interviews on news channels. Therefore our
interviews are prime examples of qualitative research because they contain the direct
opinions of the people being interviewed. In addition, some of the notes recorded by
Reuben and me during the meetings with the candidates and Alex are qualitative as they
included information regarding what was going to happen and where.

Data Gathering Agencies

Data Gathering Agencies are often used as sources for secondary research. In the
media industry this frequently includes information of viewing figures or reviews. BARB is an
example of a widely respected agency for gathering viewing figures. They collect results
from 5,100 households across the UK and multiply the figures to get an incredibly accurate
representation of the UKs 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 doesnt 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 Mojos 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, geodemographics, consumer behaviour and attitudes, and competition. Our audience and
market research was based around actually spending time with the candidates whilst filming
their 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
includes viability 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.

Sources

BoxOfficeMojo: www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/uk/?currency=local&yr=2015&p=.htm
BARB: http://www.barb.co.uk/whats-new/weekly-top-30?_s=4