A questionnaire I conducted to discover what style of short documentary our target audience (young music students) would like most.

1. Footprint By Laura Manners, Corry Raymond and jake Coates
Questionnaire
The next part of primary research we did was a questionnaire. We showed a range of
students at Weston college 3 different styles of documentary.
The first was Live at Abbey Road. This documentary is interestingly shot, has an artistic feel
and is full OD focus pulls and variations in the depth of field. We were especially interested
in a quote from the producers: ‘Look like a film, sound like a record’, and I think that really
sums up the film well. It’s quite a relevant documentary because it features interviews and
live music over a presenter.
The second was Secret Millionaire. This includes features such as ‘voice of god’ narration,
pre-recorded music in the background and basic editing and camera work. This
Documentary was relevant because it follows charity work, and at this stage we were unsure
whether the charity or Ryan would be the main focus. The problem with this example was it
is tailored to a more mature audience.
The last documentary was Michael Jackson. This uses fast editing, a combination of live and
pre-recorded music, interviews and ‘voice of god’ narration. Once again this follows the story
of a recording artist, featuring archive footage. Although this is quite similar to the sort of
style we had in mind, the results of our questionnaire weren’t fair because the audience
responded better to it because Michael Jackson was a music idol and is very well known.
Questions:
Which documentary will you be answering these questions on?
Live at Abbey Road Secret Millionaire Michael Jackson
Which age group are you?
16-18 19-25 26-35 36-45 46+
How much did you enjoy this documentary?
(1 being not at all, 5 being very much)
1 2 3 4 5
11th October 2011
Media Production
Copyright @ 2011

2. Starring Ryan Inglis Footprint Questionnaire 2
Would you continue to watch this?
Yes Maybe No
Are you likely to watch this in your own time?
Yes Maybe No
How long do you think a short documentary in this style be?
1 min 2mins 3mins 4mins 5mins above
For Abbey Road, we had an excellent response; the majority of people said they would watch
this documentary, even in their own time. The only negative responses we got were from
media students with no musical history/interest, showing us that our target audience should
be music students. They also said they would like a short documentary in this style to be at
least 5mins or above, which was the sort of timing we were after.
The response to Secret millionaire wasn’t very positive, most people found it boring and
uninteresting and not many would bother watching this. The positive feedback we got from
it were from media students, so if our documentary didn’t work and we were to use our
contingency plans then our target audience would change to media students and more
mature adults.
Michael Jackson had a good response by all the students we asked, although Abbey road had
a better overall response.
After we had got back these results, we concluded that our target audience preferred Live at
Abbey Road to the other two documentaries, although Michael Jackson was not far behind.
From these results we decided we would shoot in the style of Abbey Road, although still
incorporate archive footage etc. like Michael Jackson does.
11th October 2011
Media Production
Copyright @ 2011