Different types of research

There are two different types of research: Primary and secondary. Primary research is up to date research that you have carried out yourself. For example questionnaires, face to face opinions, ringing someone on the phone to ask their views. Secondary research is formally known as desktop research because you can acquire it all from the comfort of your desk on the Internet. It is data that has been collected by somebody else that you have access too, either for free or at a price.
Both types of researches have their advantages. Primary research is very up to date, you can acquire the exact data you want to because you are asking the questions, you can include as many people that you want in your research and you know the data is defiantly reliable because you have got it yourself.

Secondary research also has its advantages: A huge range of data is available, you can analyse trends in the market because you can get data that has been analysed over many years, it is cheap and it is easily accessible.

Here is an example of some secondary research that anyone could use when deciding what genre of film to make and who to aim it at.



Anyone could use this data to then make a film with the biggest target audience, in this case it would be drama.
You could then take this second graph and decide what age range you will aim your film at.



34% of older people prefer the genre of film to be drama, were as in the younger generation only 23% of them prefer dramas and 30% of middle age people do as well. So if I took this research I could then decide that i would make a drama film that is aimed at the middle-older people as this is where the biggest interest is. I found this information in less than 30Min's so I could acquire allot more data that could also help me if I wanted to make a film.

Because our OTS is going to be a action/physiological thriller if we use this graph, we can see that it would be best to aim it at the younger generation because 20% of this age band prefer to watch this genre of film.
When making our OTS we need to have carried out lots of research to guide us on what the younger generation expect to be included and what would really blow their socks off.

Source of graphs:
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/sfischo/media3.html

Research into what a thriller consist of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller