Primary research is research that I have carried myself to get information that I can used to help me in my documentary. This research can be carried out through Interviews, Surveys/Questionnaires, Experiences and Observations. Primary research is crucial when it comes to gathering information for a production as you are gathering your own knowledge and can easily avoid incorrect information which would effect a production drastically. Primary research involves much more work than secondary research as, for primary research, you have to chase people for answers to questionnaires or surveys and you have to go out and get the interviews with the people you need. You also have much more control in your primary research as you are in charge and in control of what answers you need and how you can get them, whereas with secondary research you may not be able to find what you need.
For my production, to get information on my target audience, I made surveys, Questionnaires, Interviews that I also used in the documentary and even a questionnaire filled in by a professional comic book writer and artist via forum discussion. The surveys and questionnaires had questions that would help me get more information on my target audiences opinions on comic books and adaptations so I also had ideas on what cutaways I could get that would make the documentary feel fluent and the viewers will be able to have a commentary from the interviewees while having some visual interpretation of their answers. For example, In the documentary we had an interviewee give their opinions on comic book movie adaptations and we had a cutaway of DVD cases for popular comic book movies. For this question we had to have two different interviews when it came to asking their opinions on comic book movies because in the questionnaire I had received multiple answers that were both positive and negative. So, to avoid biased opinions, we had to get both positive and negative opinions on comic book adaptations that weren't too harsh and made our documentary feel more opinionated than it was intended to be.
John Byrne Questionnaire
Secondary Research
Secondary research is research that has been gathered from other peoples research on the same topic. This research can be from newspapers, books, journals, Websites etc. Secondary research isn't as reliable as primary research as you may have trouble finding exactly what you need and may be limited to information as you were not in control of gathering research or answers that you need. This form of research is much easier than primary research as most of the time the information that you need will be already put together for you. Which will make for an easier find and organisation of research.
The secondary research that we used in the planning of our documentary was checking websites on the history of comic book movies, finding peoples opinions on the adaptations;Both negative and positive and the history of comic books. These helped us to get ideas on the kind of questions we need to ask and the cutaways we could get.
Some websites we used for research:
http://screencrush.com/tags/the-complete-history-of-comic-book-movies/
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/old/Hist1.html
Website on the history of Comic Book Movies
Website on the History of Comic Books
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is research that would be involved with numbers and statistics. For example, quantitative research for a film or being established into a film franchise, could involve box office figures from the previous films. More examples of this are CD sales and programme ratings statistics. The quantitative research that we carried out was the statistics of the box office sales of comic book movies and the positive and negative reviews they received. This research then lead on to our research on the opinions that people have when it comes to comic book movies, which is what we used for our primary research.
For our quantitative research we used the number statistics that we received from our survey.
The percentages from each question helped us to sum up the opinions that our target audience had on the topic of out documentary. For example, our target audiences choice of their favourite comic book brand varied a lot so we could see which were the most and least popular and so we could involve more cutaways of the most liked brand.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is research that could be used in order to get the opinions of a target audience that would be helpful or that would be needed. For example, the questions in a survey can be changed or manipulated in order to get the information or certain insights from the target audience that would help you. Qualitative research would be used in such things like marketing that would give you an insight into the aspects of human behavior and beliefs. The qualitative research that we carried out involved creating the questions in order to be able to sum up the basic opinions that people have of comic books and comic book adaptations. We needed information on the percentage of people who liked and disliked comic book adaptations as the overall concept of our documentary was about peoples opinions on comic books and comic book adaptations.
Our qualitative research revolved around our audience research as we only needed the opinions from our target audience and we were not planning on being biased or expressing our own opinions towards the topic of the documentary. Our audience research was crucial as it was the only form of opinions that we planned on putting in the documentary in the form of interviews. Our audience research was pretty much our production research as we were able to determine what cutaways or shots we could get depending on the opinions of our target audience that would make the documentary flow more smoothly.
Data Gathering Agencies
Some examples of Data Gathering Agencies are R.A.J.A.R (Radio Joint Audience Research) and BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board). These agencies are in charge of gathering and then maintaining a particular companies data. The agencies just record important information on whatever topic or subject is needed, such as recording the audience figures of a TV show or programme over the space of a week to determine how well the how or channel is received by audiences. BARB is a good example of recording the statistics of TV show ratings, normally called 'The Viewing Report'.
This is the weekly viewing summary of TV channels over the past week from the 'BARB' website.
Audience and Market Research
When it comes to research in a production, you must consider and make sure you understand what your target audience, primary audience, secondary audience and demographic is. This is important as you would be able to choose how you would appeal to your audience and how you would convey the ideology of your product to them.
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