Why We Need Audience Research?

The reason why we need audience research is to help us as producers understand what the audience want to see. however, we can not leave it all up to the audience to decide what we produce. we first as a group came up with a specific target audience which we were going to aim our production at.Then we went about looking for the targeted audience we had roughly decided to aim at. We did not strictly stick to the chosen target audience because we wanted to see how different our anonymous audience would react to the production. Out of the three methods of conducting audience research, so far we have successfully completed two. The first one is Questionnaires. The most common way of getting primary data is using questionnaires. Uncut productions took a very technological approach to this. We traditionally handed out questionnaires on paper which consisted of 10 questions which would help us identify who and what the audience are and want. These 10 questions were all based on questions that will give us information about the persons habits and the persons likes and dislikes. The second approach we took to conducting questionnaire research was producing an online questionnaire. We thought there is this service available online for a reason, that reason if for people like us to use this service. So we decided to use it. We started by producing the online questionnaire, After producing it we checked for mistakes and tested it. The questions on this questionnaire were exactly the same as the ones on the paper questionnaires we distributed. This was because we did not want a whole load of information form a whole lot of sources. This would just take forever to put together and get the information we need out of it. The problem with using the online service is that first of all we need to promote it so that people are aware of it and actually take time to complete the questionnaire. The second problem is that, because it is a online survey people tend not to take any interest in it. Reason being that now days it is very common for viruses to attack individuals computers from just one click on a link. That is the reason why using the online service could be a very tough and a time consuming approach. The second method of audience research we have successfully conducted is interviews. Two members from the Uncut production team went around with a camera and interviewed random people. It was vital that they used a camera to record the response of the people because when we put all the results together later on we might need to refer back to the actual responses. Interviews are a good way of conducting research because it is first of all one to one. This way the people can openly express what they want to say, because unlike a questionnaire they know someone is there listening to their response. The data would be more reliable and when asking questions you can be more flexible with the vocabulary you use, to suit all personal. This method can be time consuming too, because you need a set of questions that you can ask fluently to anyone. Also you need to find the correct location. For example if you are going to produce a product that will be aimed at the younger generation, you would presumably go outside a school or play center. You would also need to conduct the research at the right time, for example its no use to just go stand outside a school or play center at anytime. You would go stand outside school before or after school, when pupils will be out. You would go to a play center after school, because pupils would be in school during school hours. So considering all these factors i think this method went very well and we shall be looking forward to the results we collect. To sum up i think the approach to the research we have currently taken is going to help us a lot. we shall be looking forward to the the results so that we can make the perfect product. However notice that we have only conducted primary research so far, hopefully we would soon get some secondary just to make sure that we have taken the right steps towards the goal we are trying to achieve.