Researching Techniques

Charlotte Hollis

Contents Page

Page 2: Audience Research

Page 2: What is audience research? Page 2: What is the purpose of audience Research? Page 2: Audience CategoriesPage 3-7: Methods and techniques

Page 7: Market Research

Page 7: What is market research?Page 7: What is the purpose of market research?Page 7: Market research categoriesPage 7-8: Methods and techniques that would be suitable for market research into a new movie and why?Page 8-15: Primary Research

Page 15: Production Research

Page 15: What is production research?Page 15: What is the purpose of production research?Page 15: What methods are there of production research?Page 15-16: Methods and techniques that would be suitable for production research into a new movie and why?

1 | P a g e

Audience Research

What is audience Research?So what is audience research? Australian Museum describes audience research as a discipline of museology that seeks to uncover information about visitors to cultural institutions, such as demographics, behaviour, satisfaction, leisure habits and learning outcomes.

What is the purpose of audience Research?Before creating a trailer you need to look into the target audience so you include the right stuff for a high quality trailer which attracts the right ages. This also helps find out what and who they are targeting and what they would like to see.

Audience CategoriesWhen looking at audience category’s I looked into lots of different issues and needs a few of the techniques I used were:

Standard occupational classification – the bureau of labour statistics say the 2010 standard occupational classification (SOC) system is used by federal statistical agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, or disseminating data. All workers are classified into one of 840 detailed occupations according to their occupational definition. To facilitate classification, detailed occupations are combined to form 461 broad occupations, 97 minor groups, and 23 major groups. Detailed occupations in the SOC with similar job duties, and in some cases skills, education, and/or training, are grouped together. This helped me choose which category my trailer fit into and as my film is based with young people it was harder as they don’t fit into the categories so I based this part of my research on the parents who would decide to watch it and pay for the viewing and merchandise. Although my viewers would vary I decided to place them in C1 and C2.

2 | P a g e

Psychographics – The business dictionary says that psychographics is an analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer. Market researchers conduct psychographic research by asking consumers to agree or disagree with opinions statements. Results of this exercise are combined with geographic (place of work or residence) and demographic (age, education, occupation, etc.) characteristics to develop a more 'lifelike' portrait of the targeted consumer segment. This helps me in deciding which programmes or films to put my trailer as from knowing peoples interests and parents occupations I can find what sort of films people are into or what they would consider to watch as a family.

Geodemographics – Orau.gov describe geodemographics to be Geographic factors and trends in a specific locale (e.g. where people live, population density, healthcare, climate, eating patterns, spending patterns, leisure activities, local industry, and outdoor activities) that can help with locational decisions (e.g., selecting a clinic site) or local contact interventions. This would help me in where and what cinema’s to choose to have my film shown and merchandise sold.

Age and Gender – My target age is young people as it’s a family film. There isn’t a particular gender my film is based upon but it may appeal to females more because of the animal side.

Methods and techniques that would be suitable for audience research into a Family trailer and why:

Method: Suitable: Reason why?

QuestionnairesYes This helps me find out curtain

details in which will help me get a large target audience for my film.

Surveys

Yes This again will help like a questionnaire would as it helps me find exact details on curtain pieces that would help me.

Online forums No As my target audience is young people online forums wouldn’t

3 | P a g e

attract the right ages therefore wouldn’t get the information needed.

Interviews

Yes Like the questionnaire and surveys interview would help by getting the needed information from the target audience.

Focus groupsNo Like the online forums focus groups

wouldn’t attract the wanted target audience.

Online ratings

Yes Although I’ve mentioned how online forums wouldn’t attract the right target audience online ratings would as a parent may be looking for a fun way to spend the day with the children and may come across this.

Trailer reviews

Yes Trailer reviews would help as I could then improve what was needed to make sure it’s as high quality as it could be.

Using different methods to find out information on audience research

Internet forumsInternet forums are often used for audience research as fans from the same genre will discuss what they hope for a film or even spoilers which may encourage people to see the films. Internet forums are often a lot more helpful in audience research if the film was a book before as there’ll already be a big fan base and people waiting for a film.

Internet forums didn’t help in audience research as much as different methods as my target audience wouldn’t necessarily use the internet so I couldn’t find out what they wanted to see or what sort of things children wanted to see. I did use a family films internet forum search on Google to find out that the most popular children’s/family films are animation.

Using company’s personal data:To find out who I was working against I looked into Disney as after research and many years of watching their popular films such as the well-known princess stories like sleeping beauty and beauty and the beast I found out they were the biggest and most popular family films distributor as they work from young children films such as ‘cars’ and ‘the little mermaid’ to older children and families such as ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘John Carter’.

From just looking at their website I can see that they have a high budget

4 | P a g e

and they have a popular place to advertise their films free of charge as young people will go to this website to play Disney games and see the advertisements of films they may want to see, this page as a great example as they have a trailer playing top centre of the page where you can’t miss it. As my film is low budget I couldn’t do this.

Films target audienceFrom this survey my chosen genre family isn’t one of the most popular but that may be based on the fact that my fan base wouldn’t be filling surveys in and are too young for that sort of thing therefore may be more popular than some with four votes. From this survey as well I can see that I would need to conduct my own to make sure I have a reliable source for my research.

As the online survey isn’t always reliable as we don’t know who’s answering the questions, I decided to do my own and asked 67 people around college and my local area to get a varied opinion in different ages.

5 | P a g e

Market Research

What is market research?Wise geek describes market research to consist of testing the market to determine the acceptance of a particular product or service, especially amongst different demographics. It is used to establish which portion of the population will or does purchase a product, based on age, gender, location, income level and many other variables. Market research allows companies to learn more about past, current and potential customers, including their specific likes and dislikes.

6 | P a g e

ActionComedy

FamilyMystery

AdventureSci-fi

CrimeFantasy

HorrorAnimation

DramaRomance

Thriller

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

47

655

32

58

46

75

What's your favourite genre?

What is the purpose of market research?Without researching the market before creating a film or anything alone the lines you will be wasting a lot of time, money and resources. You need to determine the profitability of the market, what customers want in the market, who is already in the market, top rated films in the market, selling strategies, what films dominate your market and why and potential profit.

Market research categoriesMarket research includes opinions and thoughts from the public (market) therefore can be carried out in a few different methods:

Public questionnaires. Surveys. Discussions either through the phone or face to face. Focus groups.

Methods and techniques that would be suitable for market research into a new movie and why:

Method: Suitable? Reason Why?

Questionnaires YesThis would let me find out how often people visit the cinema and what a family would like to see.

Online reviews of films Yes

This would allow me to find out what family viewers like and dislike, so I can adapt my film to suit the most amount of people.

Online Ratings Yes

This would show me which is the most popular family film out there and also the most popular film out there when I’d like to release mine because if it’s the same genre then it’s worth changing when mine released so they don’t clash and I loose viewers.

Surveys Yes

This would help me in the same way a questionnaire would as it’s a similar thing but a survey may be more popular and filled out by more people.

Focus groups No

Focus groups wouldn’t attract my wanted genre fans therefore wouldn’t work as well as the methods above.

Interviews NoAgain just like the focus groups it wouldn’t attract my wanted genre fans.

7 | P a g e

Using different methods and techniques to find our market research

Primary ResearchMy market research will help me find out more about the competition out there and the size of the market.

QuestionnairesUsing my questionnaire helped a lot as I was able to find out a few needed things about my market. For example from my

questionnaire I was able to find that the majority of families go to the cinema once a mouth, families are more likely to go to the cinema if there’s a film that the whole family will enjoy, Families agree that there aren’t enough films out in the market that both children and parents can enjoy, families go to the cinema more during school holidays and that the most popular place to find out about family films is the cinema. All though it was only a 6 question questionnaire answered by only 10 people it just shows how much market research can be found in such a small low budget way. If I was to do this questionnaire again I would ask a lot more people for example the survey I took on my target audience (shown on page 6) I asked a lot more people in different areas which meant that my survey was a lot more reliable and I knew I had enough information collected to have reliable research.

8 | P a g e

20%

60%

20%

Would you go as a family if there was a film you will all enjoy?

Yes More likelyNo Wait for the

DVDWait for it on the TV

39%

49%

12%

How often do you go to the cinema

as a family?Everyday or more

2-6 times a week

About once a week

About once a month

Never

I decided to change a few of the questions to pie charts as their easier to read and a lot clearer. From looking at my pie charts it shows what the most popular category is with just a glance. I chose to use the percentages on the pie

charts as it gives another clear answer.

PostersMy poster research was really helpful as it helped me decide on colours, detail,

and positioning. From my research I have found that family posters are very bright and use a lot of block bold colours, therefore I will do the same but I’d like my colours to be more on the bold side than the bright as I would like the colours of crayons so it looks hand coloured. The detail used in family posters varies a lot

9 | P a g e

60%30%

10%

Do you agree that there aren't

enough movies in the cinema for young children

that parents can enjoy?

Totally agreePartially agreeNeither agree or disagreePartially disagreeTotally disagree

63%18%

9%

11%

Do you go to the cinema more of-ten during school

holidays?YesUsuallyNoSame amount

for example ‘The Lorax’ only has his face in the background and ‘Tangled’ has a whole scene.

My poster follows most posters with the main actors/voiceovers listed at the bottom, the release date, and a bold title. The main focus of my poster is spread out for example the house is at the top centre of the poster like the characters on the tangled poster but the mouse is at the bottom right similar to the bottom centre gnome on the ‘gnomeo and juliet’ poster. The posters above are created with computer animation whereas mine is hand drawn but coloured on Photoshop. I have done this is as I want my poster to use the traditional cartoon like ‘The Simpsons’ for example.

Trailer

Researching other popular family film trailer’s such as Moody Judy and the NOT bummer summer and Horrid Henry the movie helped a lot with knowing what to put in the trailer for example pivot points in the story and the main part that makes it the genre like humour parts in a comedy and I also found out how long the trailer should be. Most internet sites, such as Wikipedia, ehow and quora say that trailers should last from about 40 seconds to a minute and a half but from all the trailer’s I’ve seen which are Judy Moody the NOT bummer summer, horrid

10 | P a g e

henry the movie, Mr popper's penguins, who framed roger rabbit and honey I shrunk the kids they’ve lasted around 2 minutes to 2 and a half minutes long.

Forum groupsBefore producing my trailer I wanted to get some feedback on it such as ‘do you think the trailer was successful and did it contain the codes and conventions of the appropriate genre so I can improve on what I needed so I showed a class my trailer and got some feedback. My findings were very helpful and I got back what I thought I might for example some of the extra comments mentioned that the trailer looked a lot like a music video and how the fire building went on for too long in comparison to the dream. Asking different people that like different film genres helped as it meant they weren’t looking at what was going to be in the film but the quality of the trailer itself.

Yes

Majority

Do you think the trailer was successful?

The feedback on this question was positive as it clearly shows that the trailer was in fact successful even though I made it my own and there were some risks and mistakes in the trailer such as the main part of the film (the dream) wasn’t shown much as I’d like it to be kept in the dark until the first preview, this was a big risk to take as people may pay to see the film and get disappointed with the outcome but I feel it would fit in the codes and conventions and sit nicely with other family films.

11 | P a g e

Yes

No

Majority

Did it contain the codes and conventions of the appropriate

genre?

This question wasn’t as positive as the one above as some viewers found that it didn’t contain the codes and conventions of the family genre so I will have to go back over the trailer and correct it – this may mean I will need to create another survey/questionnaire but base it only on the codes and conventions.

Yes

Would it sit comfortably along-side other trailers for the cer-

tificate?

This question is one of the most positive as I have had 100% good feedback. This may change when I adapt my trailer to fit the codes and conventions but it shouldn’t by much as if it fits the codes and conventions it should fit the certificate.

12 | P a g e

Are the following appropriate?

Font Images Wording Tagline Colours0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

YesNo

I will need to adapt the colouring in some of my shots as it’s too dark but luckily I will be able to do this in adobe premiere which means I won’t have to go out and re shot which is what I didn’t want to have to do although if the editing doesn’t work then I may have to. I thought the font worked well as its bold and stands out but a couple of my viewers found that it didn’t work with the genre so I’ll have to change this to fit.

Online reviews/ratings of current and past films

The reviews and ratings on current and past films were really helpful because from this I found that all the top family films are animation and films for very young children for example “ZhuZhu Pets Quest for Zhu” got a rating of 8/10 and got nearly top reviews along with “Care Bears: Share Bear Shines” getting a rating of

7/10 coming in 7thwith top reviews and “In The Night Garden All Together” getting 9/10. After looking through the top family films I have gathered information, like what families want to see and what attracts viewers, which would help my film get into the charts which would mean I get more viewers and make a larger profit.

13 | P a g e

SurveysSurveys helped me find out what parents would be willing to take their children to see and what they would enjoy to see with their children. This would help me decide on the content of my film and what would be acceptable in a family film and what wouldn’t upset/disappoint the parents and children as a lot of my advertising will be through word and mouth. For example from my survey I found that a popular theme of family film is animals.

Production Research

What is production research?Business Dictionary describe production research to be the component of market research whereby the characteristic of a good or service, that will satisfy a recognized need or want, are identified.

What is the purpose of production research?Production research is used to make sure the product/film is produced accordingly and in the best way possible, and also how they can advertise their product in the best way and in the most according way depending on the demand in the market place. Another purpose is so the distributor knows how much money it will cost for the product or again in my case a film to be created and manufactured. Production research also ensures that the product has sufficient quality to please consumers or in my case viewers. Usually, production research begins with an involved research and development phase. For a professional standard of working all the aspects of the product have to be clearly thought out.

What methods are there of production research?There a quite a few methods for production research just like other research but as there are so many purposes to production research there are more methods – like other research these include questionnaires, online reviews, online ratings, surveys, focus groups and interviews but for production research you could also use books and e-mail which would be un-suitable for other research but good for finding out from other companies about pricing and techniques.

14 | P a g e

Methods and techniques that would be suitable for production research into a new movie and why:

Method: Suitable? Reason why?

Interviews Yes

Interviews would work as long as you’re asking the right people the right questions and you can ask direct specific questions that could be asked about anything needed to know without spending hours of unsuccessful internet or book research.

Email Yes

Similar to interviews specific questions can be asked and you can store the e-mails for other products or films later in life that may apply.

Books Yes

Depending on the age of the book books can be very helpful in finding information anonymously so competitors wouldn’t know how much information you know and what you have against them.

Questionnaires Yes/Partly

Like interviews and emails specific questions can be asked although the down side of questionnaires you can’t reply on honest or professional answers.

Forums Yes

Forums are probably the easiest way to research for this subject as the data or information may have already been collected and people may have commented on ways to help in terms of production.

15 | P a g e