In my theory and research lessons, I will be carrying out some primary research, research of which I have gathered and collated myself, and also secondary research, which is research already collected by other people made available to use, such as information on the IMDB website. Once I have completed this task, my research will include the plots used, themes and also music used in the production that relates to the general target market audience. The target market that we want to appeal to is mainly 16-25 year old, both genders, all sexual orientations and ethnicity’s. The general purpose of this research is for a musical production that myself and other members of my class will be filming alongside the performing arts students at college.
From my research I expect to discover that out of the various people of whom I shall ask, the majority of the females aged 16-25 will stereotypically enjoy viewing musicals with the general theme of romance, for instance the musical production of Les Misérables. Also, I assume that the majority of males won’t be keen on musicals at all, though if they were to watch one, they would prefer one with lots of action. Going by the people I will ask ages, I expect that the younger members won’t be interested in musicals at all.
To complete my research, I will be using both primary and secondary research methods in order to gather reliable information. In my primary research, I shall create a type of survey of which I will list a certain amount of options from which the people taking the survey can choose from. This is independent research which I will find out myself, then record down in a quantitative data form of a tally chart or in a block chart table.
I will also be using the more reliable secondary research method, of which I will find out information from various websites and non-fiction books and then record down in a qualitative data form, noting down in paragraphs my findings.
With both of my research methods, I am more than likely to be finding out more secondary research as it is more reliable because its factual information.
In my opinion, the most appropriate and reliable research technique for this particular subject would be internet surveys. For this type of survey, I would appoint various answers as options for each individual question and perhaps allow the person answering the survey to tick their desired option. Regarding the internet survey, I would post a link to the survey on social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and perhaps various internet forums which have relevance to media and musical productions.
This particular research survey technique would be best to use, as an advantage would be that it’s less time consuming than, for instance, focus groups, and also a lot less money.
I think that other research techniques, for example using a focus group, isn’t a very appropriate technique to use for this particular subject as the people partaking in the focus group could give rather biased answers depending on what the other members of the focus group answer. This would then prove to be an unreliable research technique as the answers are not truthful.
Another method which I wouldn’t choose to partake in would be street surveys. This research method is rather time consuming for the person asking the questions, and also the person participating giving the answers. The general public are not likely to want to stand in a street answering questions which aren’t particularly of relevance to them, therefore I think this would be a waste of time and money to do. It’s the same regarding interviews also, as people wouldn’t generally have the time to sit through an interview answering questions for a survey. This is why I have chosen internet and postal surveys, as it’s an advantage because people can answer the set questions in their own time with no pressure of surrounding peers, no set time amount and little to no money being used on the method.
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