Research methods

To create my short film I will need to use research methods for gathering the information needed that the film appeals to the target audience. 

The main research methods are:
Primary- This is research you carry out personally
Secondary- Research you gather from other people
Quantitative- This is when you carry out questionnaires/surveys and you look for a pattern or tree within peoples answers/responses
Qualitative- This method investigates the why and how of decision making and people's opinions, ideas and thoughts and feelings.

As primary research is things that I carry out personally it is the main one that I will use. Examples of primary research methods are: questionnaires, polls/surveys, focus groups, email/text/letter, interviews and textual analysis of other short films. One advantage is that the researcher can have control over the information that is collected and gathered. Also with primary research the researcher can gather qualitative and quantitive data together so they can get a range of different feedback. However one disadvantage of primary research is that it can be expensive compared to secondary and you will have to pay to get the information and sort out interviews etc. An advantage of using questionnaires is that they can gather information quickly, they are easy to create and you can get direct answers. However one disadvantage is that they can lie and they can be time consuming. Another advantage for surveys is that they are not expensive and they can be informal if that is what you wanted in your short film. One disadvantage to this is that people might not be interested to answer and may again lie. One advantage for email is that it is cheap and it is easy to get people opinions. One disadvantage is that it can be reported as junk mail and it also could be ignored. 

Secondary research is where you gather information from someone else so it is much easier to collect. Examples of secondary research methods are: search engines, books, magazines and websites. One advantage of secondary research is that it is very accessible and you can always get information from anywhere as there is something about this topic in either one of the examples I gave and a plus side is this it is free. However one disadvantage is that the research may not be in the suitable format that you need and the text could possible be enough or not enough detail. One advantage for the internet is that it is free and you can gather a lot of information from specific websites. One disadvantage is that the information on the websites could not be reliable and maybe taken from other sources first. One advantage from books is that it is mostly correct information and it is easy to find the information you needs. One disadvantage is that is will expensive if you buy the books you use.

The research methods that I will tend to use will be primary and quantitive research because they are an easy way to collect the data that I require for my short film and they are the easiest ways to find opinions on the key features, such as the edit, camerawork, sound and mise en scene. How it attracts them and what they like and dislike about my front cover.