OUR AUDIENCE RESEARCH
PRIMARY RESEARCH
The different primary research techniques we went on to use were: A Questionnaire, Vox Pops and Focus Groups (in the style of a podcast).
Questionnaire.
A questionnaire is a set of written questions with a choice of answers. Questionnaires are used to gather information based on other people's answers and opinions.
The questionnaire we created with targeted questions helped us a lot as many people answered within the time frame and the results ended up being very useful when creating our promotional material.
Below I have included some example screenshots of the questionnaire we have created.
https://forms.office.com/Pages/AnalysisPage.aspx?
Above is the link to the results of our questionnaire. The answers we got were useful because we were able to find out a lot about potential audience this way. I think one reason for this was because unlike with the other research methods people didn't have to physically speak with us. We found that a lot of people were quite nervous when it came to speaking to us while doing the focus groups and vox pops. People are more confident answering written questions and we definitely got the most people involved with this method.
We were able to gather information on different things such as the audience's preference when it comes to promotional material, genres, title sequences and if they find certain types of promotion useful eg. posters. We also asked some things to follow up on other questions such as asking which illustrators people prefer so we can gather ideas about what we would want things to look like if we were to make a poster.
Below are some screenshots of the results and a bit about why they were useful to me
The questions pictured above were created to maybe give us some information on our possible target audience's gender and age statistics, I think that the age statistics are very useful and gives us an age range for what our target audience will be so that we can promote in the correct way so that more younger people see it - eg. through social media - however I don't personally see the benefits of the gender question thinking back on it because the play we are creating promotional material for is not aimed at a specific gender therefore the content we will be creating will not need to be aimed at any specific gender.
I think that the questions pictured on the left were useful because they showed that we actually have quite a large audience out there among young people which many might not expect. The statistics show that more than 50% of people that answered the questionnaire have seen a live concert/performance before.
The questions above were extremely useful to us as they gave us a big indication on which genres our target audience are most drawn to and what would influence them to go and see a play or a concert.
We learned that genre was extremely important to them and played a big part in if they are deciding to go and see something.
The fact that the genres 'Drama' and 'Comedy' both came out on top was very good for us as there are themes of both comedy and drama in 'Our Day Out'. The fact that genre was the biggest factor that the target audience is interested in when it comes to plays allowed me to come up with lots of ideas about what I was going to create when it came down to my promotional material.
From the results of these questions, I am thinking that it would be a great idea to reflect the genre of the play as much as possible within my final products as this is clearly important to the target audience. I plan to feature comical or dramatic elements within my promotional material.
Similarly to the questions above, the question on the right helped us to identify which parts of live performance are the most important to our audience. This could be a useful question to refer back to when it comes to our filming and editing.
For example, because the acting and performance was the most important to people, we will have that on screen and emphasised the most when it comes to our final edit.
The questions above allowed us to find out what the best way of promoting would be. Because our target audience is within the young adult age range, social media was the most popular answer. Therefore when our promotional material is created, we will most likely use social media more than other methods. I think it would also be a good idea, for example, to print posters out and put them up around college and outside of college too if we can, maybe we will even post some.
The questions above allowed us to see if creating a Netflix style title sequence for the play would be of interest to any of our target audience and it came out as a point of interest for sure.
We also asked which shows they watch as maybe it would be useful for us to get inspiration from the most popular examples.
Finally, an important and useful question we asked was if theatre is an important cultural art form and most people said either yes or maybe. This means that there is still a market and an interest for theatre and live performance. We also asked about any possible interest in livestreamed/pre-recorded performance as we plan on filming and editing the performance and wanted to see if this sparked interest - luckily it did.
Overall, I think that this was a really effective and quick way to gather a good quantity information as lots of people took part and gave detailed and useful answers which we will definitely use in the future as they have helped us identify our target audience.
Vox Pops.
Vox pops - meaning 'voice of the people' - is a short audio or video interview made up of clips from members of the public. They investigate the public's opinion towards particular topics.
We were tasked to walk around the college and interview other students (within the target audience age range) in this form. this was effective to an extent however due to quite a few factors such as how most people were quite nervous/anxious about talking to us, didn't have the time as they were going to a lesson. I thought that perhaps it could be a more effective way to gather information in the future if we had the chance to interview people outside of college who maybe don't urgently have somewhere to be -I suggested to others that perhaps maybe going to the popular park across the road and asking people questions could be a way to get more informative answers.
Overall, we found that most people didn't really want to give many detailed or serious answers for various reasons such as the ones I have Iisted above. Despite this, I also think that it went much better than I expected because I didn't think we would actually be able to find anyone to talk to, yet in the end we managed to interview five people in our group and other groups also spoke to more people than they expected.
Below are the questions we asked and the audio files for both my group and the groups in the rest of the class.
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What do you know about the NLC Drama department?
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Have you attended a live theatre performance or concert before? If yes, what did you go see?
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Is promotional material important to you?
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What would you say a production called ‘Our Day Out’ is about?
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What kind of things would persuade you to attend a theatre production?
Vox Pop Audio Recordings.
OUR GROUP
OTHER GROUPS
Focus Groups.
A focus group is a gathering of deliberately selected people who participate in a planned discussion that is intended to elicit consumer perceptions about a particular topic or area of interest in an environment that is non-threatening and receptive.
A photo of our focus group is shown above.
This was extremely effective and I think definitely more effective than the vox pop method for not only our group but for the rest of the class groups because these people we interviewed were selected directly by us as we knew they would add important points and ideas to the discussion as they are drama students and are therefore passionate about the topic. They were prepared for the interview and therefore much less nervous and the conversation was overall much more productive.
Underneath is the list of questions we asked and the audio recordings of the focus groups.
OUR FOCUS GROUP
OTHER FOCUS GROUPS
SECONDARY RESEARCH.
After completing all of this primary research and getting as much information as we could with the chosen methods, we went on to complete some secondary research about the play itself that the NLC Drama Department is going to perform: 'Our Day Out'.
I thought it would be best to watch the play itself online and identify themes and key moments that could be useful to us when creating promotional material.
Themes & Key Moments.
Even before researching the play I had an idea on what kinds of themes would be present in the play as I am familiar with the work of Willy Russell who wrote plays like 'Blood Brothers' which highlight the hardships that young people - especially in the lower social classes - went through at the time and still go through to an extent today he wrote a lot about class divide and about the cracks in the education system. The idea of both 'Blood Brothers' and as it seems 'Our Day Out' too was to provoke change by starting a conversation and holding up a mirror to society at the time.
Education: The play looks at how the educational system, especially in more lower class and underdeveloped areas, can fall short in giving young people opportunities as often there isn’t enough support in education for people with the struggles and difficulties the children in the play have such as mental health struggles or their issues with their home lives outside of school. Typically people feel as if children hate school however it is touched on in this play that sometimes going to school is the only escape some children have from their issues at home.
Social Inequality: The issue of social inequality is brought to light by the stark contrast between the lives of working-class and struggling students and those of their more privileged peers. It is clearly shown how much social inequality effects everything as it ties into all of the other themes on this list in some way or another.
Authority and Rebellion: Conflicts between students and their teachers or other authority figures are explored, as well as the students' rebellious behaviour. The exploration of the bad behaviour in this case highlights how the children in the play most likely do not have these experiences often and they therefore don’t know how to behave in these new situations they are in, an example of this could be like when the children come back on the bus after a trip and the teacher gets angry and tells them they were behaving like 'animals'. Another example, to expand on this point, could be the scene where the bus driver gives the children money for sweets and drinks because the teacher told him how they probably haven’t ever had 'lemonade touch their lips'.
Another reason why these children may not know how to behave is because they were not taught how by their parents or guardians. There is a scene on the bus where a child is speaking to a teacher about his seemingly neglectful parents.
Escape and Fantasy: The characters frequently take day trips and excursions to momentarily get away from their daily lives. The scene on the cliff is a very key moment which highlights this theme and other themes too. Carol, the girl on the cliff, goes missing from the group of children on the trip. The teachers look for Carol in a panic and eventually find her on the cliff edge saying that she doesn’t want to go back home to her troubled home life. This shows us, the audience, that Russell really wanted to highlight that Carol's only escape from the hardships that come with living in such a neglected and deprived area is the trips that the class went on. This shows how underprivileged these children are and how hard it is for them at home. Eventually Carol has to be talked down from jumping by a teacher.
Youth and Adolescence: The play explores young people's experiences, hopes, and difficulties as they navigate adolescence and look for their place in the world. It is evident that the children in the play struggle with this when you look and refer back to the scene on the cliff.
SUMMARY.
In summary, I feel that both the primary and secondary research that I carried out was very useful and very necessary.
The questionnaire got us a lot of answers from a lot of different types of people - with the questionnaire being electronic it was easy to quickly send and distribute it to different groups to get various answers quickly. We were able to find out information about which kind of poster and illustration styles are preferred and what kinds of title sequences are preferred for when we eventually create our own promotional material. We also found out for example that promotional posters are still important to people and are often a crucial part in getting people to go and see productions. We asked things such as how people stay up to date on productions they may go and see and social media, as expected, came out to be a big factor due to the target audience.
With the vox pops, they were somewhat useful and I think that with more practice and experience on carrying them out on our part we could've gotten better results. In addition, as I said above I feel that maybe college wasn't the best place to do the vox pop interviews as most of the people we attempted to talk to either didn't have the time for us as they were going somewhere or were too anxious. I think that if I were to carry out vox pops again in the future I would go to a different location and maybe push for more answers by asking more follow up questions/more open ended questions.
I ended up managing to find some of the people that were interviewed after they took place and asked them a few questions to gain some feedback on how we could have improved as a class, someone I spoke to stated that they felt relatively uncomfortable, surprised and interrogated so maybe next time it would be useful to think about our approach as it is understandable that it can be pretty intimidating to have an interview randomly sprung upon you when you don't expect it.
I think the focus group was probably one of the most useful research forms I have ever carried out as it was a targeted meeting/discussion. I feel that the questions we asked were detailed and provided us with a lot of information and ideas for when we create our final outcomes.
Finally, the secondary research that I ended up doing after this - watching a film adaptation of the play itself and reading some of the play to understand the plot - helped me to identify the themes and most important, memorable moments in the play. This will further help me when I come to designing my poster and title sequence.