Research Techniques- The Review

 Evaluation

Let's start with the what I use and how effectively I did it.

When discussing questionnaires I think that the information I provided about what a questionnaire is was good, I covered both sources of information that you can get from using this method. Discussing primary and secondary sources of this was one of my stronger points of this section as it was easy to discuss and explain with justification on the good and bad points about it. 

However I do feel that there are areas where I could improve, such as providing better examples of where each method would be more useful for what type of thing being done but over all I think that Questionnaires were my strongest point.

Onto Focus groups, this one is a bit weaker as I couldn't really find a lot to discuss in essence because they're self explanatory really. We go through life doing focus groups when we work in a team so this becomes something that you know and just gets narrowed to specifics of what the discussion is.

There is room for improvement for example I could have discussed differentiation more when it came to how focus groups impact different decisions of a production, maybe gave some real world examples to back up my points too but overall I think that while a bit more wobbly this section was still okay.

The final section, live research where I carried out my own stuff. 

Starting with questionnaires, now I definitely had a lot to improve here for example instead of asking broad open-ended questions I should have had a more narrowed approach to get better results that could have helped me more in my production. The way a pulled together the data could have been smoother too and instead of loosing results by including a middle option I should have stuck to simple Yes/No formula to achieve the best possible result.

The focus group, this was definitely a luck one. I had no back-up group ready in case this was cancelled or people couldn't make it and with a group as small as it was that would've ended up hurting my production badly, not to mention the fact that I had no back-up questions or development points which would have been extremely beneficial to me and my research.

In summary I felt that I did better with the background of the techniques rather than putting them into practice themselves. 

Focus Groups: What are they?

The Breakdown

So Focus groups, I'm sure that we've all heard of them or maybe have been in one at some point but how effective can they be? All they seem to be is annoying and boring as a way of gathering information but as a way of getting opinions and the chance to talk about the product itself as well as being able to discuss further details about the product itself . It provides the opportunity for companies to get a better idea of how well the public will react to a new product or advert they're going to put out there, and you're able to get some better opinions from the idea than possibly from a questionnaire as you can actually see peoples expressions and body language.

The Good

So we know about what a focus group is so why is this a better preference than a questionnaire and as a good source of information for a project, well for a start as I mentioned earlier they are great for finding out more information as there's only so much a questionnaire can tell you. This comes from the fact that if you work with a focus group you can show a draft or demo of the production and gauge reactions from that but, it also gives the unique opportunity to speak with people to figure out their reasoning for the points given as generally with a questionnaire explanations are generally optional so the chance to get a more detailed response to what has been said is invaluable.

However it's not just the detail above questionnaires that makes this the superior but it also gives you a good point of reference when it comes to the development of the project, by this point it's good to have a demo or draft of what product your producing. Typically this would be when the product was till in its early development phase as it might not be as good within a week of the products end or launch but it's still useful to have as a marker for the making of the product.

  

The Bad

Now onto the bad, the first of whom is inherent bias. Now bias isn't a typical word used for things like research methods or within what's technically the preproduction planning stage but everything has it in one form or another so what about focus groups, how can they be bias? Well there's a few ways that I didn't even know, the first one is obvious when you think about and that's down to the fact of interest in the product itself.

When it comes to the interest of what's being made there's obviously a bit that can play a factor in this that would impact the results from the group as the people speaking have a pre-existing interest in what's being discussed whether it be good or negative there's always the chance that an opinion on the products being looked at making any results gained from it questionable.

Now a last thing to consider is the idea of getting opinions, it's the thought that a small number of opinions from this focus group represent the majority of people when that's not strictly true. In fact having a small sample size could potentially do more damage to the product than good hence why this technique is a follow-up on what has been changed based on what was given from a questionnaire and then convene a smaller group in order to get a final input. So this is an important point to consider that while similar to the topic I mentioned earlier in general but at this level it has a different outcome.

The Secondary

This is where it differs to the questionnaires and other types of research methods too, sure you can find evidence in the form of videos online for a focus group but they won't have the specifics that you're looking for so while you can get some secondary data, it won't give you any particulars that you need.

Instead the best form is to make up your own version of a focus group to get the best data possible, and it's not just at the start of a production either when putting an edit together there's a 'draft' video that can be put together based off of the material gathered earlier and then use that as a baseline for the group.

Reference List

OCR Business Studies for GCSE, 2nd edition (Paraphrase of Information)

Revise Btec National Creative Media Production-Revision Guide

The Pros and Cons of Focus Groups | Bloom Ads

The use of focus group discussion methodology: Insights from two decades of application in conservation - O.Nyumba - 2018 - Methods in Ecology and Evolution - Wiley Online Library paragraph of (179)

Music Video Analysis 2-Tribute by Tenacious D

Who and the what? 

So far we've seen Katy Perry and looked at what genres that her video would fit into so what about this song? Well for a start this isn't a typical music video and more to the pioint its not a normal song as it has to follow its own narrative structure.

When looking at this video a few things are identifyable easily, the first thing being a studio performance. We literally see them walking into a studio for most parts of the song, however this is not the only indication fo this idea, if we look at later in the song when they talk about the demon it's on a greenscreen with flooring to match the setting meaning that mosty things we would normally consider when looking at these songs wouldn't be as effective to apply here.

Going back to the idea of the video itself, trying to identify the genre is again quite easily identifiable and is seemingly related to Roar, it follows a narrative granted its preset and embedded into the song itself. So what makes this structure significant compared to another song liek Roar and more importantly why would this way be different to Roar? Well lets look at the video again, throughout we can see a lot of Artists Close-Ups the idea came from a man called Andrew Goodwin (who will be covered in a seperate post) who observed that any music video should several close ups of the artist(s) in the video itself in order to properly succeed in what it attepmts to do. There's an awful lot in this clip of that very idea whether it be in the booth, on the road or out in what we can assume is a shop and this brings us to a new idea.

Its something that companies all over the world use and that's selling the brand. It's not the product that they want to sell you but the brand which is exactly what's done here, now I'm not just singling out thgis video for it but this video does show the point pretty clearly by making sure that the more iconic member of the group (Jack Black) is always in the front of the shot set-up and the guitarist (Kyle Gass) still within the frame but in a not too prominent position compared to his co-star making it easy to identify who is meant to be used to sell the band through two ideas within the close up and that's the Branding and the Vulture of celebrities.   

Music Video Analysis 1-Roar by Katy Perry

 What's here?

So in music videos we see an awful lot of stuff but what does it all have to do with the lyrics we can hear behind them,  and more to the point why are most of them so gripping?

Well that all comes from the idea of the emphasis. Most of the time there are certain aspects of either the artist or the song itself, Katy Perry is a good way to show off this idea. One thing that's prominent throughout the video is the artist herself and that comes from the idea of star iconography where the artist shows in the video in order to sell the artist themselves as well as the song in order to generate traffic and profits .

 In this video there's a lot of visuals to do with the jungle which reinforces the visuals of the actual lyrics themselves. This comes from the idea of Illustration which plays a big part in the what I have called "The Big 3" of music video production where you make a choice while making the visuals to go alongside the song, the more general one is called Illustration that I have mentioned earlier where you do roughly no more than show a visual interpretation of the lyrics to the song. This can help in planning as you can make a better structure as you have clear point of reference when creating as you can match a change in scene to the beat.

Now as I mentioned earlier there is a big thing in this type of video called star iconography but this idea plays into a bigger one that's used an awful lot with femlae artists called the male gaze, I think I have spoken about it in a previous post (Mulvey And The Media) but I'll give a quick summary, its the basic idea that showing women in suggestive positions gives more attention to the piece being viewed.

Here may not be an obvious example of the idea of the male gaze but it does give a good look at what I mean, now at first the idea looks to be drawing attention to the monkey holding the piece of fruit but that's before the artist comes on screen.

The POV of the shot is the tiger which gives us further emphaisis that who weire meant to be looking st is the artist herself, one of the signature parts of a woman that men look at is their legs. This has been portrayed in the media to a large amount but it leads to a good point hat while we exepect that there's a lot of revealing clothing but this seems to follow more the actual tracking of the gaze itself rather than the simple stereotype of the idea.

Now there's not just theories behind the idea but genres too, and for this there could be a few that you might think of but for music videos the idea is different, you apply it more in terms for a music artist so if you think it could be a stadium for a concert that gets used or it could be on location such as a performance on the Empire Stadium. Following that we can tell that ebyond the song there's actually a story behind what we can see therefore this video becomes a narrative, which emans that while we can get the base enjoyment of the fun of the video there's also a clear structure that helps to connect the visuals on screen to the audience as they then subtly become invested behinf the story that the cideo is telling.

There's more surrounding the video itself and that's a narrative, specifically a performance narrative. This tells a story through the performance of the artist, if you listen to the lyrics there's a contrast between the performance of the star and the actual song itself. Using this in the video is a way of amplifying the lyrics in a different method as having the star acting brings your attention to certain points of the song. This links into a further amplification of the songs lyrics through having the artists face open at all times so we can see the lip sync which helps to give the song a strong point, this use of emphasis is reinforced by the use of edits between scenes.

There are parts of this video too that show exploration and have both characters in the beginning dressed is a stereotype explorer outfit while they move through the jungle exploring, this could be an intertextual reference to Indiana Jones. Looking at the male character seen on the screenshot to the left bares a resembelence to the popular character in his costume style and the environment around Katy Perry as the video goes on and she begins to discover more and more about where she is. However as much as there's an intertextual reference to the character Indiana Jones during the start of the video sequence the rest of the video has a similar thread to Lara Croft for the lead, her outfit and overall personality are similar to that of the character which help to bring together the idea of the cideo being about exploration and survival.

Carol Vernallis-The Conventions

 The what done right

Carol Vernallis is a media theorist who works in discovering meaning and depth behind music and music videos, she has a number of works about this topic.

She looks at a variety of factors when analysing a music video some of which we have looked at before in different contexts such as continuity and relationships between sound and video, meaning of editing etc.

A lot of ideas that she uses come from four categories that we look at when not only creating a music video but when we analyse one too. I'll cover her ideas briefly and what we can take away from these ideas when we make our own music video.

The first one of the ideas to discuss is her thoughts on camera work. Vernallis theorised the primary reason of having close-up shots of artists or the bands with in videos at the frequency in which it becomes almost common enough for a cliché is because it highlights the importance of the artists themselves but also it draws more attention to the way that they look in the video itself.

From this we can take and understand that camera work shows a bigger significance to music videos and the ideas presented from them, it highlights that stars play a big role in music video production as they are the USP for the production. It also helps for the audience to connect with the video as it's closer to the artist themselves and draws them in more as who their viewign is able to relate to the period of whenever its set as there's that additional layer of connectivity.

One of the big theories of everything media is continuity editing, now what this is is the idea that most videos will have smooth transitions or something to that in order to keep the audience involved with the narrative of the visuals on screen so that the audience avoids disassociation.

Carol Vernallis actually covered this idea in her writing ‘The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing'​ where she talks about the idea of why there's limited to no continuity editing for music videos, and I think this quote demonstrates this point: "Perhaps music videos avoid continuity editing because such techniques would give the visual track too strong a forward trajectory the image might seem to overtake the song" (The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing Page 3, line 5) I think this is a good argument as mst forms of media such as videos have what's called encoded information which the audience decodes inorder to get the meaning of what's been seen, understanding this point helps us for we come around to making our own video. It tells us from a quite reliable source that we need to be careful about the type of edits and transitions that we use as the amount of information being directed at the audience, but also that t can take away from the main purpose of the video which is to promote the song.

So this along with other points that Vernallis makes are almost like a tutorial in helping people to develop their own videos in a better way. From edits and how camera works to an idea of star iconography referenced in the same work it helps us to get a bigger and better understanding of what goes into the production of a music video and how we then interpret the visuals that we have seen.
The article was originally released back in 2001 which means that some of its ideas may be old, such as actually the idea of avoiding continuity edits. Before we saw that Vernallis spoke about makers employing them rarely as their use could lead to an overwhelming amount of information for the audience and instead stated this "Unlike films, music videos frequently intentional disjunctive cuts."  (The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing Page 5, Paragraph 3, Line 1) We know that this is interpretation is considered outdated as both film and music videos employ the opposite when it suits thr right purpose of the media product a good example of this in film is from Inception (seen below) the editing technique may be used to a different effect but the sharpness of the cuts to vastly different paces of scenes does show a form of disjunctive cuts can lead to audience disassociation with the scene as it breaks a traditional rule of continuity as there's no smoothness between each cut.

​ 

Here's a second case disproving the idea, in this music video from Duke Dumont we can see that actually there's a large amount of continuity within this video and actually it's not all that overwhelming for the audience as every shot matches well to a lyric and work well together to create an all around good music video. There are cuts within this yes but they are a part of the scene being played out and all it does is change the position of the camera in order to give the audience developed meanings behind the intentions of the artisit and song therefore making a strong case for this argument being an outdated point as there are more examples of this idea of continuity editing through the industry in the past 15 or so years.

 

References

functions-and-meanings-of-music-video-editing.pdf (wordpress.com)

Carol Vernallis- Functions and meanings of music video editing (slideshare.net) for camera work.

Carol Vernallis (slideshare.net) Scan readign for any details missed.

Questionnaires-The Breakdown

 The What and how

What is a questionnaire?

Answering this will give a better understanding of what they are and how important they can be when making any type of product. So what are they? Questionnaires work like this, you have a set amount of questions relating to the topic being covered (for example employee health) in order to get an idea of a wider margin of effects that something has had or to gauge opinion on a product or production depending on the situation.

What information can be gained?

There are two different types of data that you can get from this type of survey/questionnaire and when you begin to make or design one you need to think of when thinking up of one. The first one is Quantitative, this type mainly deals with measurements and numbers such as lengths or angles but it can be applied to media as well, we need to know the shot angles and locations not to mention timings too but how does that help us now? Well not only does it help when working out the camera work and setting but it can do a lot of work when it comes to pricing and sourcing, one of the best ways to get the data such as pricing or other data relating to this is through Secondary Research or Second-hand from existing sources such as the internet or newspaper.

Next is Qualitative which is less of a measure on more about what the characteristics then stats like its counter part, what can we get from this? Well if continue with our media example we can find out what people are looking for in a product promotion such as within an advert with it's visuals or persuasiveness, or maybe to get information on the product itself (if that's what your promoting) but they can also help to figure out what you want to make and how effective it will be once production is done.

Different Types

Now as with many other things within the world there are different types of questionnaire however there isn't as many different types as you think there are. The different types include:

Computer: This is where the questionnaire is sent out in an email and the receiver has to respond either through a link or document that attached to said email. As a method of distribution and response this is a good type to use as it gives people more freedom and time to respond. However there could be issues relating to inboxes such as spam folders etc. or the more likely outcome which is that people who get sent them will ignore what's sent through.

Phone: This type of questionnaire is more problematic than others mainly due to the fact that it has fewer methods of response. For example trying to gauge a full group response will be more difficult than a face-to-face or on the web type but the main thing is expense as more often than not companies calling out could be charged large sums if calls are made to multiple people over large extended periods. This is not including reception, possible language barriers and other such things that could have an effect. 

Face-to-face: This is almost self descriptive as it's done during the initial interview stage at the end of the talk, but this has many different forms such as being in someone's home or place of work which can make them feel uncomfortable given the circumstances but it's yet again more expensive for the company as they would have to pay for the copies of the questionnaire and the time spent outside of the office (and possible travel too).

Post: Now we've all had mail ballots and this works on a similar principle and can actually give some good results as people sent can reply to them in their spare time which means that data gathered could be more accurate. However again costs are a considerable thing to consider as it's a lot of pre-paid resources that could end up being put into the bin by the responder.

Strengths and effectiveness:

 So as a technique for collecting data how good is a questionnaire? Well if we look at it from a statistical stand point then we can see that it's certainly very helpful in getting a baseline for what's being tested, if different groups are being evaluated then it can triangulate the areas in which the groups come from or help find the groups that found it more useful than others. They can help with getting a general percentage for certain products/services or to help provide an idea of how it works for them (the consumer) and maybe an idea from a larger audience on what the company/organization can do to help improve it for next time.

These types of research methods used are easy to make and send then simple to fill out for the responder making it a much smoother process than some other methods out there. It helps to give companies a guidance for focus groups to talk about or to get information from even if it's verbal.

Weaknesses and limitations:

As with most things there isn't perfection coming out of this by any means there are a few pitfalls that come with using them. I mentioned previously throughout this response about company costings and this is a big limitation that changes depending on which type is used, if it's a physical copy that can go in the post then you have to think about printing costs and envelopes to send to them that also include a return on them. Linking there's also the possibility of phone costs as most phone numbers will charge whoever rings first which is more often than not the company who made it.

Yet it's not just costs that have an effect on it but the information gained, for example in a survey of 100 people there could be 12% positive response, a 20% negative response and then there could be an undetermined result of 68% which isn't exactly helpful data to use when collaborating all the data together which makes this a big weakness when it comes to getting the data together.

Conclusion:

When using a questionnaire be careful, making sure that all the information that you get is justified in how effective it will be to you and the business/product being made. There are some fairly big negatives against this, such as funding and the amount of data that's collected at the end of this compared to how useful it is compared to other methods. However for a founding baseline in the development stage of the production to help guide your ideas and the flow of how it then develops it becomes a better value of research than others.

Reference Link:

Questionnaires (research-methodology.net)

Understanding Qualitative, Quantitative, Attribute, Discrete, and Continuous Data Types (minitab.com)

OCR Business Studies for GCSE, 2nd edition (paraphrase knowledge given)