The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

Primary research is new research done to answer a specific question, primary research is research you gather yourself instead of looking for research online or in books for you to use this research can be carried out in anyway. I gathered primary research through online surveys, these surveys were used to find out peoples preferences on thing regarding my film. We also did primary research by setting up and recording an interview with someone who was knowledgeable on our subject. But some other ways to gather primary research are questionnaires, photographing events and focus groups. In our project we interviewed our games development teacher because we felt he would know a lot about the subject.

Secondary research is research that has been previously collected and is being re used for your purposes instead of carrying out your own research. We found secondary research by looking up newspaper articles on our subject and finding videos on the subject and using them to find information to use. some examples of secondary research we found was some detailed articles on our subject and some adverts from the time of the event.

Quantitative research is research that is to do with statistics and other numbers such as polls, surveys and questionnaires. We used surveys to make our own quantitative data these surveys were sent to people around our age group to make the results apply heavily to us and our subject another example of quantitative data we gathered was that we looked through advert from the time and picked the one with the most views online.

Qualitative research is research that is about finding detailed and useful information this information is usually about opinions and provides insight into the subject instead of just providing information about it. To produce qualitative information we asked people who around at the time of it happening and people who know a lot about the subject to gain a unique insight into our subject.

There are a lot of data gathering agencies such as the BARB broadcasters audience research board, which collects information on how much shows are watched and on watch channels and at what times this is very useful for researching media and finding out what people like. You also have websites like IMDB which have detailed descriptions and ratings of movies and shows, it also has the entire cast of the films and shows user reviews of the films so you can see what people really think of them.

In our project we did audience research through surveys that were sent to people in our age group as we felt that this audience would be the most likely to watch our video and therefore their opinion on the video would matter the most. These surveys featured questions like gender and their opinion on the subject of our video and if they would watch our video. Some examples of ways to gather this kind of data are through audience awareness and competition.

When looking for production research we considered the viability of our video and whether it had already been done we found that there were a number of small documentary style videos on the subject but nothing major. We also had to consider our technical limitations when recording dialogue because we don't have a soundproof room in our college and a lack of personnel. We found these problems out by looking for a place to record our lines and looking for extra people to be involved in our video.

Audience research is about researching the viewing habits, needs and wants of the audience and the viewers of the content you want to make and to estimate the size of the audience watching a particular show or form of media. Market research is about finding out what a group of people need and what they will enjoy so you know what to make to please that crowd and make a profit. Production research is needed to add to the production being made it focuses on researching what is  needed for the production and what is needed to not only keep the production going but also make it as good as it can be.