This is from the exam board - TAKE NOTE IF YOU WANT AN A GRADE!
The practice
of students giving out questionnaires and putting all the returned examples in
their evidence has been discouraged for a long time. The main problem with this
approach is not the survey method per se but the limited nature of the
questions and the claims made for the responses. For example, asking ten fellow
students their favourite genre of film, finding that seven out of ten say
‘horror’ and then using that to justify making a horror film opening as a
result. Audience research is more productive if it addresses the following:
· What do real audiences consume?
· Who are the specific audiences for particular
products?
· How do media industries target those audiences?
Those questions require research of a different kind to the local questionnaire
method; initial research online looking for data about the industry students
are dealing with, such as box office figures for films or circulation figures
for magazines would be a good starting point. Part of research involves looking
for examples of how marketing works across a range of media- for films this
includes considering posters, trailers and their selling points, for example.
Later audience research should be considered in a series of stages, each
involving formative qualitative feedback. So, for example:
· Pitching the product to the rest of the group
and taking feedback, noting the responses from this and deciding how to act as
a result.
· Showing early drafts of the work (such as an
animatic of the storyboard or a mock up front cover) and asking some carefully
framed questions about them to get a sense of the audience’s understanding of
the product rather than just a measure of whether the audience liked it.
· Taking peer feedback at later stages and then
again on the finished product; asking things like “can you tell me what
happened in that sequence, what the relationship between the characters is and
what do you think will happen in the rest of the film?” to look for audience
readings of the work. ‘
These approaches can be presented in a variety of ways- video extracts with
framing commentary from the makers; audio, written. All would help move away
from the pie chart of responses model which tends to be fairly unproductive.
