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Unit 3: Research Techniques in The Creative Media

Unit 24: Writing for Television

Task 1

Introduction

This webpage aims to show the importance of research and how creative media industries carry out their research. In this webpage, type of research, methods of research and purpose of research will be covered using examples from media industries.

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Type of research

Quantitative Research:

Research that is presented in numbers giving statistics or percentages. Although it can be easier to understand by just looking at the numbers, it is not specific enough. Examples of quantitative research are ratings, box office figures, sales figure or budget number.

 

An example of a piece of quantitative research is box office ratings on IMDb where it shows box office ratings between the 2nd-4th March 2018. They rank which films earn the most ratings between those dates and it shows that the Black Panther has earned the grossest profit meaning it is a popular film during that weekend because many people have paid money to go and watch that film.

 

However, it does not show reviews from viewers about this film probably because IMDb wants to keep spoilers away from people who are considering watching this film without too many spoilers (reviews with spoilers will mention if it has spoiler content or not).

 

Instead, they have star ratings which is another type of Quantitative data which shows an average rating out of 10 (1 being worst and 10 being best) based on how much stars viewers has put. For Black Panther, it shows the number of people rating it and the averages.

Qualitative Research:

Research that has answers in detail that can be thoughts or opinion on a certain topic. The benefit of using qualitative research is that the questions and opinions are open which gives researchers details about what they are trying to find out, however, it could be time-consuming if a large number of people are being interviewed and opinions could be biased which could affect the data. Examples of qualitative research are reviews, interviews or focus group.

 

An example of a piece of qualitative data is critic reviews on Rotten Tomato where it shows several reviews rating from good to bad from people who watched the film “Red Sparrow” before.

 

Those reviews can help people decide whether to watch this film or not. However, those reviews may contain spoiler information therefore, it may not be recommended for people who don’t want to be spoiled about the movie.

 

Instead, it is more recommended for audiences who’ve watched this movie and using Rotten Tomato, they can display their thoughts and opinion of the film; like a forum.

 

An image showing box office rankings between March 2nd-4th 2018 on IMDb

An image showing user ratings for the movie

Black Panthers on IMDb

An image (on the left) showing critic reviews about the movie Red Sparrow on Rotten Tomato

Methods of Research

Primary Research:

Research that is first hand and obtained directly. They can be obtained either through a survey, 1-1 interview, focus groups or questionnaires. The best thing is you can go and ask people in your target market and the answers they give are very specific to what your trying to find out, however, the disadvantage of primary research is that it could be expensive to carry it out as some companies may hire external organisation to structure the questions, it is still primary research because it is you who is carrying out the research. Another problem with primary research is that it is time-consuming.

 

For example, If you want to find out “which genre is the best in film?”, you would carry out questionnaires. It can be both quantitative or qualitative; it can be quantitative because if you asked closed questions, there will be numbers in your result. For example, if you asked “which genre do you like?” and have multiple choice, the answer will be in numbers and according to this example, it would show that thriller is the most popular genre choice, this would be a type of quantitative data.

 

Another example that is qualitative, is you asked open questions like “What do you think about [genre] films?”, the answer will be specific which can help researchers with their topic of findings.

 

Secondary Research:

Research information that is already there and is known to be called “second-hand information”. An example of secondary research is information from similar companies, company accounts, newspaper articles or government statistics. Although the information has already been carried out, it can be time-consuming to find secondary data your looking for and the data may not be reliable, therefore, unspecific.

 

For example, if you were to make a drama film, you would research other films so you would try to base other drama films to your film. By doing this, you would need to carry out research by finding out (either qualitative or quantitative or both) data about films around the genre you trying to make.

 

A piece of example is “The shape of water”, you would find as many data about that movie as possible. That way, when you make your drama film, you make it base it on the genre. You also would need to find quantitative data so that you are aware of the popularity of the genre and how you would meet your target audience.

Organisations:

They are third-party external organisations that help you find information which saves time. However, you may not be able to find the information you wanted to look for and it can be expensive to hire them to help you. Examples of data gathering agencies are Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) or Radio Joint Audience Research Ltd (RAJAR). Although data gathering agencies carry out data, it is not clear whether viewers are actually watching the programme being shown.

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For example, if you want to find out about the viewing data for TV programmes like BBC, you would use BARB to find out on average how long people spend on a TV programme. BARB ranks which TV programmes have the most average viewing rates.

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RAJAR is very similar to BARB except RAJAR shows the viewing data for radio programmes rather than TV programme.

An image (above) showing ratings of the movie Shape of Water and it's review (below)

An example (below) showing people's film genre preference 

*disclaimer: this information below is not real

An image (left and right) of the company RAJAR and BARB respectively

Purpose of Research

Audience Research:

It's about the audience based on demographics, geographics and psychographics. Researchers also look at consumers behaviour or attitudes. Researchers need to know what they are targeting whether it is a large group or small group of people they want to target, they also need to find out whether customers are aware of the product a company is trying to sell through any methods of research. However, the problem with audience research is that it can be expensive and time-consuming to conduct your audience research because using information about 1 person is not enough and reliable and therefore it is time-consuming to conduct research on a wide range of people within the market.

An example to show on audience research is if you want to broadcast a show, you need to find out who is going to watch them and when.

 

For example, if you plan on broadcasting the TV show “Stranger things” on the TV show rather than on Netflix, you should consider when is the appropriate time to broadcast it and who’s your main target market.

 

For age, the researchers found out that most people aged between 18-29 years old have seen Stranger things. You may also do further research on your target audiences such as:

- Gender

- Geographical location

- Climate

- Income

- Socio-economic group

- Occupation

- Target market’s needs

- Race/religion

- Lifestyle

 

If you want to find out the best time to broadcast you need to consider a realistic time to broadcast suitable for your target market. For Stranger things, if you want to find the best time to broadcast a 40-60 minute TV show, you could ask your target market which time they usually watch TV every day.

 

You might want to avoid broadcasting it during daytime where your target market might be busy during the day or afternoon where children go watching which could cause trouble as Stranger things can be too graphical for children’s to watch. It is probably best to broadcast it during the evening or later than 10 pm where your target market might be available at home and kids are at sleeping.

A graph above showing who watches the TV show Strange Things

Market Trends:

Researchers look into the product they plan how to market the product. They find out what type of people wanted the product or if they want the product or not by finding out how it targets a specific market. They also keep up to date on the trends of what's going on in within the market so that researchers can keep up to date with the trends and be able to meet the trends to their target market. Researchers also find out what similar product does other people have and how researchers can make their product unique to other competitors product. However, the disadvantage with market trends is that there may be too many competitions in the market and products life cycle could decline meaning less profit made.

 

An example of market trends is a recent increase in PG-13 (Parental guidance for kids below the age of 13) movies involving gun violence because people these days are more into movies with guns and violence, it even shows an increase of under 13 years old target audience watching PG-13 movies involving weapons and violence. Therefore, producers who made films like the “Avenger” series used this opportunity to make money by producing a movie involving weapons and violence.

Production Research:

If a company wanted to launch a product they will have do to some production research. Basically, researchers need to look into all aspects of the production stage.

 

They have to find out ways to develop the product the company want to launch. They have to find out what available resource there is and what factors they have to take accountability for to decide whether the thing they wanted to have is doable or not with the budget they have, not to mention they need to find out who is going to fund their product launch and how can companies manage the budget they have. Companies need to identify what do they need in order to make their product launch a success, such as equipment, actors, props, clothing, etc. The company also have to do some location scout; finding out what type of locations they plan to use and once they find an ideal location to film, they need to book it.

 

The disadvantage of production research is it could be time-consuming as you need to consider many and create pre-production documents; the better your pre-production plans, the better the shooting will be.

 

An example of production research is your work when your planning to make a video or a short film, you must consider all aspects of the production stage. You also need well-planned pre-production documents as researching this is the most important in the stages of production. This is so to ensure that the production stage (meaning when your shooting), runs smoothly and you know what to do at all time.  

References:

Frayha, A. (2017, January 20). Gun violence keeps rising in PG-13 movies, study says. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/20/health/gun-violence-pg-13-movies-study/index.html

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