Research and Planning

AS

Primary research

Pitching the basic idea of my music magazine

Created a questionnaire to get an idea of how much money people spend on a music magazine and how often they are purchased.

Test shots of the band to see what they would look like on the cover

Came up with a band name using 'band name generator'

Secondary Research

Looked at existing magazine that had a style i liked and wanted to use

Tried out different colour schemes that music magazines had

Used cover junkie to research covers

Looked at previous blogs

Pro’s and cons of Primary research

Primary research is research gathered by me or my group. Therefore a con of this type of research would be that it’s purple based on opinion, meaning it can be fairly subjective and bias.

Another con is that it’s only your ideas meaning you might not be accurate with certain conventions needed. (without researching and secondary factors)

A ‘pro’ of primary research is that it allowed individuals to gather their own ideas and get a basic knowledge of what they wanted to achieve. Meaning when it came to secondary research we knew what we were looking for.

Pro’s and cons of secondary research

Con- people might have lacked originality or creativity by just looking at existing work

Pro – We could be influenced by real media products already existing and use their similar conventions

A2

Primary research

gaining audience feedback through pitching and moodboards

decided on genre of band and band name

Secondary Research

looked through books of album covers to gain inspiration

looked at previous students blogs

Research and planning skills

Due to the brief at A2 involving the making of a music video, digipak and advert more research and planning was required in order to gain a deep understanding of all three areas. Some might argue that at AS we also had three tasks however they were all in the same area of a music magazine. Meaning we predominantly researched music magazines. As opposed to A2 when we research CD covers, music videos and album adverts that are different media areas. 

My research and planning skills have improved dramatically especially throughout the A2 coursework. At AS research and planning was new to everyone and I didn’t understand the amount of planning that is needed in order to have a good focus on what I wanted to achieve. My research skills involved buying music magazines, looking at their convention and using them in my own work. At  A2 my research and planning skills improved, I became quicker using the technology and had a better idea of what to research such as, certain websites (FFFOUND) used to gain inspiration. From using the technology of Photoshop in the previous AS task I was more advance when using it at A2.

Expense and costs – At A2 there was no real cost of research and planning, we did use books but they were provided for us. At AS the only really cost was maybe £10 that was used to buy music magazines.

Accessibility and time - Research was easy to come across as we mostly used the internet or existing products.