Critically compare a range of research tools methods and skills

I’m going to compare a range of research tools, methods and skills to find the most effective and reliable way of conducting research to find out information that will help me with the filming of the promotional video for the national emergency services museum. I will discuss the methods, reliability, relevance and similarities between primary research methods like formal interviews, vox pops and questioners.

Primary research

Primary research is research conducted by yourself with no work by anyone else contributing to your end results. I will conduct some form of primary research before filming the video for the museum. Conducting primary research onto of secondary is a good idea as it will give me information and views given by the general public who have been or may go to museums and I can use their feedback to help make the video more successful.

Vox Pop

A Vox Pop is where you approach a member of the public in a public aria like a park or a street whilst usually filming and recording audio, if they consent to being part of the research you continue by asking them questions tailored to the information you need. If I do a Vox Pop, I will ask questions like “when was the last time you went to a museum?”, “what did you like the most about the museum?”, “how old are you?”. The answers to these questions will be useful to me because the question “how old are you?” will tell me the age of the target market so I can tailor my video to the target market to make the museum more appealing to its target market so more people will visit. The pros of Vox Pops are that you can get allot of information out of someone in a short amount of time and the answers will be long expanded answers rather than closed yes/no questions. Another pro about Vox Pops is that there a very reliable source of information because it’s a face to face conversation so its harder for the person being interviewed to lie. The cons of Vox Pops are that allot of people don’t like to be filmed and/or are busy in public places so don’t have time to stop and be questioned.

Formal interview

A formal interview is where you arrange an interview with a person to discuss their views and experiences with a certain topic. They usually take allot more time because they have to be organised then the lighting, cameras, audio and seating arrangements have to be set up. They have some positives though, as they take longer to conduct than a Vox Pop the interviewer tends to be able to get more and better quality information because they have more time to carefully plan the question that they’re going to ask the person. Also the person being interviewed arranged to be there so they will have more time for the interview so they will usually answer the questions in more depth. whereas with a Vox Pop the questions and answers tend to be more rushed because the person being interviewed will have been stopped on there way to go somewhere so they will be more keen to leave. This is probably the most reliable form of research as it’s a face to face interview with someone who wants to be there to give their views and experiences so they wont lie and will give more accurate information.

survey

A survey is a list of questions usually either on paper or an internet survey. They tend to be more closed of yes/no questions. They are good for getting allot of information very quickly because they don’t require an interviewer to go to a person to get them to fill out the questions, the questionnaire can be emailed or shared on social media and can reach a very wide audience allot quicker than other methods.  They are also good for getting quantitative data, its one of the easiest ways of getting quantitative primary data. As good as questioners are, there not the most reliable source for research due to the fact that there not face to face and anyone can do it if they want to its very easy and common for someone to lie about there answers they put.

similarities

Formal interviews and vox pops are virtually the same. They ask the same questions and answers but there more time has been spent over the question and answer resulting in more accurate data. Questionnaires aren’t so similar as there not usually face to face nor do they share similar questions, they accumulate quantitative data.

Secondary research

Secondary research is data and information collected from souses such as books and primarily the internet, its research conducted and published by someone else. It’s a very quick way to get information as you just look up a previous study or set of information.

Comparing research

Secondary research is useful for getting quantitative data very quickly as you can look it up on the internet and find usually find what you need. It has downsides though, you cant always find what you want and sometimes when you do its not exactly tailored to your needs. Also, data collected from sites of the internet cant be trusted fully because you weren’t there to oversea the study so therefore cant guarantee the legitimacy of the data. Primary research is a very effective way of getting reliable, relevant information but it can take a while to get the information. Its generally more reliable because you conducted the study yourself so know that the results are true, the data collected is also usually more relevant because you can tailor the questions to your needs to get the most useful results.

Conclusion

I think that the best way to conduct research is to use some secondary research from more reliable and trusted internet sites but mostly rely on primary research as its more reliable and relevant. The best ways to collect primary research is by conducting vox pops and questionnaires, this is because questionnaires can collect allot of quantitative data quickly because it can go to a wider audience and vox pops can get reliable information from face to face interviews with people and they’re quicker than setting up a formal interview with someone meaning you can do more vox pops and get more data.

My secondary research

I will need to get information before filming the video for the museum. For some of the information the best way is through secondary research on the internet. I will get the map of the building from the museums website http://www.emergencymuseum.org.uk/map.html. Ill get the route to the museum from google maps https://www.google.co.uk/maps and the tram times from the south Yorkshire travel website https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/. Because I’m going to need to get some exterior shots of the building ill need to make sure that’s its not raining on the day of the shoot and ill check the weather on the BBC weathers website http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/. The last thing I’ll need to know is the opening times of the museum which i will also get from the museums website http://www.emergencymuseum.org.uk/map.html.

evaluate your blog and research methodology

For the blog post on a professional in animation (I used John Lasseter) I needed to research about his life and career. I used the internet for all of the research as it was quick, easy and I could get a vast amount of information straight away. I used it to find out about his personal life from when he was younger and his career starting from when he first worked at disney up to his position in the present day and what projects hell be working on in the near future. The problem with the internet research is that I couldn’t always find exactly what i was looking for as the useful information is in amongst allot of useless information. I also couldn’t find out personal opinions of there career. Next time i would do it slightly differently and find actual people who work in animation and ask them face to face or on the phone there personal opinions of the career there in.

terms in film

Sign:

This can be anything that communicates a meaning. Could be a; sound, image, object, camera shot, prop, character

Signified:

The meaning which is created by the signifier. Meaning which is divide by two- denotation, connotation.

Denotation– the obvious literal meaning of the sign e.g.- a rose is a flower

Connotation– the mental association with the sign e.g.- a rose means love

Encoder/encoding:

Messages are created by media producers with a preferred meaning in mind

Decoder:

These media messages are consumed or decoded by the audience

Preferred meaning:

The overall message of a text intended by the encoder

Anchorage:

The process of reinforcing the preferred meaning. A way of tying down the meaning of the text. This can be done by captions, voice over or images that accompany a text and anchor its meaning.

Diegetic sound:

Sounds that are in the frame, happening in the narrative, able to be heard by the characters, source of the sound is on the screen.

Non-Diegetic sound:

Sound that happens outside the frame, cant be seen on the screen. E.g. music that suits the mood.

Mise-en scene:

In film studies the term mise-en scene is used to describe anything that can be seen in a frame such as; setting, props, costume, performance.

Mind map of different film genres 1.2

Avatar;

Action

Adventure

Si-fi

Vfx showcase

With hints of;

War

Drama

Romance

Epic

Thriller

Into the storm

Disaster

Drama

I give it a year

Rom-com

Chick-flick

Comedy

E.T.

E.T. is mainly a si-fi film this is because the main focus of the film is an alien, dramatic music and darker grading but occasionally throughout the film you get a feeling that you get from a coming-of-age film. You see this other genre coming through the films heavy si-fi facade when Eliot and et become friends and you see Eliot take responsibility and looks after E.T. and helps him attempt to contact his home planet. You see the film change pace a few times throughout the film. It starts of as possibly a thriller with the dark grading and dramatic music building up tension before the audience finds out that the creature in the crops is friendly. Next it moves into the coming-of-age section of the film where Eliot bonds with his brother and sister, Gertie and Michele and E.T. the alien. The final most prominent Genre is the Si-Fi element where the government officials come and do tests on E.T. and the dramatic sound, harsh lighting creating lens flares and fast editing are all classical elements of si-fi.

Secondary research

I had to research several key pieces of information before filming at the national services museum. I used there website for allot of the research, it was helpful for things like the floor plan of the building (image above) which I needed so I could plan my filming locations. This is the web page address that i got the floor plan from http://www.emergencymuseum.org.uk. I also researched the travel arrangements from getting from the meeting point in Hillsborough collage media store room to the museum. I use google maps to find the route and times from the collage to the tram stop and the tram stop to the museum (https://goo.gl/Q5gl0Y) this told me that the route from the college to the museum will take 35 minutes with he route consisting of a 13 minute 0.6 mile walk from the collage to Hillsborough interchange tram stop and a 16 minute tram journey on the yellow line with a final 5 minute 0.3 mile walk from the cathedral tram stop to the museum. This meant I knew that id need to set of at 9am to get to the museum for about 9:45am. I found the tram times from hillsborough interchange to sheffield cathedral on the travel south Yorkshire website https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com, I found that the yellow route tram arrives at Hillsborough interchange at 9:17am. I researched the weather for the day to see if we were able to do outdoor shots using the BBC weather website http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ and it said that it was going to be mostly dry with clear skies from 10am and a high temperature of 12 degrees.

I did some research into the target audience and I found that on the website trip advisor thats its a very popular museum with an excellent visitor rating. In the comments most of the people say they took there children to the museum and the children really enjoyed the vehicles.http://goo.gl/JUya7P.

Genres and there codes and conventions

Genres

List of genres;

• Crime
• Thriller
• Disaster
• Epics
• European
• independent
• Kids
• Animals
• Teen
• Family
• Short
• Bollywood
• True story
• Adventure
• Film noir
• Factual
• Fiction
• Silent
• Si-fi
• Dance
• Animation
• Drama
• Historical
• War
• Coming-of-age
• Western
• Documentary
• Gangster
• Sport
• Spoofs
• Comedy
• Musical
• Chick-flick
• Special effects showcase
• Art
• Spy

Codes and conduct within genres

Action;

• Fast pace
• Explosions
• Dramatic music
• Helicopter shots
• Wide shots followed by a dramatic low angle mid shot
• Weapons
• fights

Horror/thriller;

• Slow pace followed by fast editing when the drama happens
• Dark blue/grey (occasionally red) grading
• Dark picture
• Lightning
• Old house
• Night time
• Torrential rain
• Unexplainable noises

Comedy;

• Light places, location may be a normal day to day location e.g. house, supermarket, coffee shop
• Nutralistic camera work and editing to show no character is better
• Clear sound
• Natural light with bright colours that portray happiness
• Props that my hurt a character and other incidents that would usually hurt a person allot

Romance/rom-com;

• Aimed at female audience
• Boy meets girl storyline
• Normal day to day life
• Bright natural colours
• Slow pace editing

Drama;

• Real life events
• Journeys or character development
• Audience can relate to characters
• Tension kept by the use of climaxes and anti climaxes

Si-fi;

• Space
• Advanced technology
• Aliens/creatures
• Dramatic noises/music

Disaster

• A large disaster (usually natural)
• dramatic sounds
• fast editing
• relatable characters
• a main character portraied as a hero that never dies
• special effects
• destruction
• panic
• dark and green/grey/blue grading

Epics

• large budgets
• full of action
• lots of modern technology (loads of CGI)
• usually a main heroic character (usually white male) saves everyone

Primary research

How to conduct an effective VoxPop?

• Smile and look welcoming so more people will be comfortable with you approaching them
• Learn to accept rejections, some people just wont be comfortable with you approaching them]
• Ask a large amount of a large variety of people, a large amount of people will mean you find more people willing to be interviewed and a large variety of people will get a better array of answers.
• Use open ended questions to get more detailed responses then yes/no but don’t just use open ended questions, get quantitative data as well.
• Make the questions relevant
• Make the questions simple and to the point

How to produce an effective questionnaire?

• For questions like age where people don’t like to answer, use boxes with several options to leave their information confidential while you still get the data you need. For example, 0-5, 6-12, 13-18, 19-30, 31-40, 41-55, 56-70, 71+ for age options.
• Not too long, people are more reluctant to turn down an interview of a questionnaire if it will take up allot of there time.
• A mix of quantitative and qualitative data
• Keep the questions simple, easy to understand and too the point
• Ask screening questions at the beginning to find out if there right for the survey e.g. have you ever been to a museum for a questionnaire about what you did at a museum)

Questionnaire planning

The aim for my questionnaire is to gain information that will influence the production of my promotional video to help bring more people to the museum that the video is for. The museum is an emergency services museum and is aimed at children between the ages of around 5-10 (junior and primary school level). My target audience is parents and primary school teaches who take those children to the museum.

Question ideas- I’m going to start the questionnaire with asking the age group of the person then ask if they have ever visited a museum and if so when and where was the last place they visited. Ill ask what kind of museum they last visited; art, automotive, science, general, natural history, other? Ill ask some quantitative questions like how many times per year do you visit a museum? or how much would you pay for a museum? Ill also ask qualitative questions like; did you enjoy your last museum visit?

survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6WHPVLF

My vox pop video: