Creative Media Research

Creative Media Research

Why is research important?

Researching for anything can give you information that is related to the thing you are creating or doing, give you inspiration for your ideas, show you how the media is supposed to be and help you plan a budget for the things you will need for production.

We went to shops to look at rival soup adverts to make sure we didn’t make a carbon copy of already existing products, we also researched the things that would appeal to men for the advert, we decided to do seasonal soups and looked up different flavours we could use to make sure the colour of the label and the flavours matched the seasons.

We listened to a bunch of different radio shows and stations to find out what kind of radio shows exist and how to structure the show, we found out how many songs, adverts and reminders we could fit in-between the talking in the amount of time we had.

We watched film noir movies to make sure we knew how they are structured and what things happen in most film noirs and found out what kind of lighting, costumes, characters, stories and other film noir things we needed in our movie and applied them to our filming.

When should research be done?

Research should be done as the first task of any product or media where you do the big bulk of research although you will always be doing research during the rest of the production due to either adding new ideas or just needing to know more things or accidently coming across more information.

At the beginning part of the soup ad we looked at how to advertise to men and what kind of soups there are but during the production we looked at how to make the labels and packaging. Once the advert was made and the product designed we then looked at how we could market our soup so researched using apps and billboards.

The first thing we did was listen to the radio shows, podcast, radio dramas and other radio stuff to get the idea of what we were doing, later on people from the radio (Capital FM) came to talk to us and we also visited a radio station (Radio Newark), we also listened to more of them.

At first we watched 3 film noir movies and annotated pictures of comics and photos that are film noir stuff, later I wrote a bunch of character bios, a script and looked for props and looked for locations to film.

How does research improve the product?

Research will make sure you know what you are doing and to make sure the product is how it is supposed to be, it can also improve the product if you knew more about the process of creating it through research and also make sure you have not basically made a carbon copy of an already existing product.

The research helped make the soup cans look like actual soup cans that could be sold, the radio station show and drama sounded like they could be broadcasted and be unnoticeable that it’s a student creation and the film noir looked like a short movie with all the film noir tropes. Basically with all of them the research helped to make each product identifiable as an advert, as a radio drama and film noir film.

Definitions of research types…

Audience research is where you find out about audience types to better advertise the product and you can also get the audiences and consumers opinions on the product so you can change it to be better for them how they would like the product to be.

Market research is where you research other rival products to make sure you don’t end up as a clone of them or too similar but also to make sure you don’t do things that failed for the rival companies.

Production research is where you find out how much it would cost to make the product and if you would actually get money from the product, you also have to find locations, technology, objects and people who are available to make the product and to make sure the production goes right.

What kind of research have I done?

I have used audience research for my soup advert to make sure we could advertise for men, I also used it slightly for the film noir to find out how to make the film that is like the old film noirs while also making it appeal to younger people.

I did market research for the soup ad by going to shops to look at other soup cans and we watched some film noirs to get the idea of how film noirs play out.

We did production research for the film noir where we got props, actors and locations ready for filming and we got cans for the soup advert.

Research types…

Primary research is where you do the research yourself whereas secondary research is where you get the research from someone or somewhere else like on the internet.

For the soup ad we went to the shops to look at other soups, for radio we listened to multiple radio stations and for the film noir we watched some movies and made questionnaires relating to our film.

I learned how to make a film noir story and things that film noirs always do such as femme fatales and failed crimes so I could write a film noir story and I learned how to research for things properly like what kind of things I am supposed to research.

For secondary research we looked at a soup ad website and search google images for can pictures, for radio we looked at what kinds of radio shows exist and listened too many online radios and we used comic book images that were for film noir stories also using YouTube, websites and the internet for all three.

FMP Research…

I used… Online, Statistics, Viewing/Listening, Surveys, Books, Social Networks, User Comments and Observation in my research for creative media and these are also the kinds I will use in my final project.

I will use the internet, observation, books and social networks to gain information about stories in order to show how my FMP story will be plus the use of previous creative media products to show how my story will connect to them in some way. I will also find out how a city would be set out and how many people would live in the fictional city to help flesh out the locations and then of course there are the characters that will have bios made of them.

To find out how many people would live in my city I would google different cities to find out how many people live in those cities to find out how many people would live in my fictional city. I will find a list of building types and other structures both man-made and natural to decide where I think they would fit into my city and name the buildings and streets based on the things that are in them.

I might end up using viewing/listening if I watch some stuff relating to them such as watching a superhero films, TV series, cartoons and video game play and to see how it would be changed and adapted into a film noir scene and maybe using user comments and surveys may come in handy but only if I can think of any reason to get feedback.