Secondary Research

Along with completing primary research my group has conducted secondary research, mostly on the internet, to find possible information, archive material and music for our documentary:

Secondary Research on Prezi

Primary Research

My group have recently contacted possible interviewees in order to find out whether it will be possible to conduct an interview with them for our documentary:

This is a screenshot of the email we received from the sleep laboratory in Arrowe Park Hospital; unfortunately we were not able to set up an interview with their sleep specialists as they do not have enough time to hold all interviews that are requested, so to be fair to everybody they had to decline.

These are screenshots of the emails sent between our production group and Liverpool John Moores University- we have been able to set up an interview with one of the psychologist lecturers working there to discuss sleeping patterns, whether or not remedies actually work, etc.

This is a screenshot of the email we sent to Andreea Doolan, the flight attendant we were initially going to interview; however due to her being called away on a long haul flight we lost contact and made arrangements to conduct an interview with a night shift worker as an alternative.

We additionally made phone calls to local doctors but were unable to set up any interviews due to their limited time.

Formal Proposal

Today my group came up with the formal proposal for our documentary production, outlining what type of documentary it will be, what content we will include and what research and resources we need, etc:

Topic - Sleep
Type of documentary – Mixed
Style of documentary – Informal and informative, fully narrated
Channel and scheduling – Channel 4 – 8:30pm, Wednesday night
Target Audience- young adults/teenagers 15-20/educated audience

Primary research needed:

·         Interview with a shift worker and/or an air hostess

·          Interview with Psychology teacher/ psychologist

·          Vox Pops: Where is the strangest place you have ever slept or woken up?, How do you feel when you don’t get enough sleep?, What keeps you awake/ distracted at night?

·         Interview with the sleep clinic?

·         Locations for filming – airport, bedrooms, train station, public shopping areas, school

·         Interview with new mums and dads on changes in sleeping patterns around a newborn baby

·         Interview with the wife of someone who snores

·         Props- coffee and cups, beds, etc. (for title sequence), remedies

Secondary research needed:

·         Archive footage: clips of babies crying, people snoring, people sleepwalking, etc. Music relevant to topic, TV news extracts, documentaries on dangerous dreams, YouTube clips of people dreaming. Photographs of babies for cutaways.

·         Dangers of sleeping, narcotics, sleepwalkers, insomnia 

Narrative structure: Single strand, Linear, Open

Outline of content:Different peoples sleeping habits, based around their family or their job, and how sleep affects our day to day performance in life
Dreams and the mysteries of them, why do we dream, does cheese make us dream
Strangest places people have fallen asleep
Remedies that keep the human body fighting off sleep or help sleep and whether they actually work
Sleep clinic and interview with someone who runs it
VOXPOP – the joys of sleep and favourite thing about sleep
Interview with psychologist/psychology teacher
Interview with Shift worker/Airhostess
Interview with new mums and dads
Footage of people yawning
How sleep affects people emotionally, mentally and physically
How sleep can affect lives Sleeping disorders
Interview with relative of a sleepwalker


Resource requirements:

·         Digital video camera

·         Microphone

·         Tripod

·         PC with Adobe Premier Pro software

·         Tape

·         Voice recorder

Brainstorm of Content for Documentary

During today's lesson my group produced a brainstorm of all of the possible content for our documentary, based on the topic of sleep, that we will then choose from and include various sections within our documentary plan:

Questionnaire Analysis: Video recording

We additionally filmed two people from our target audience answering our questionnaire:

Target Audience Research: Questionnaire Results

After asking 30 people from our target audience to complete our questionnaire my group collated the answers to produce results that may be beneficial for our documentary planning and production:

This pie chart indicates that the majority of people we questioned were female.

This pie chart shows that we questioned people from a wide range of age groups, however a large majority were between 10-20.

This chart shows that almost a third of the people we questioned go to sleep at around 11.00pm on weeknights.

A large group of people questioned have around 8 hours of sleep each night, with a small percentage having up to 10 hours of sleep.

This chart shows that 50% of people answered that they do remember their dreams.

For this question we found that half of the people questioned have had the same dream more than once, whereas the other half have never had the same dream more than once.

The majority of people who completed our questionnaire told us that they do find it easy to fall asleep.

A few of the most popular answers for this question were 'play on my phone', 'listen to music' or 'watch TV', however the largest percentage answered that when they can't sleep they do not do anything to encourage sleep.

This question showed that most people feel rather moody after not having enough sleep; a few people also feel sick/ill when they have not slept for long enough.

A large percentage of the people we questioned do not listen to music when trying to go to sleep.

10 out of the 30 people we questioned answered that they will listen to most types of music, followed by a large percentage liking mainstream music.

This chart shows that most people think the best thing about going to sleep is having a comfy bed.

This pie chart shows that the two most popular colours were pink and blue.

Almost 50% of the people we questioned answered that they do have nightmares.

A very large percentage also answered that they never sleep with the light on at night.

Target Audience Research: Questionnaire

My group today produced a questionnaire to be completed by our target audience, in order to find out basic information relating to them and our chosen topic of sleep:

1.       Are you male or female?

2.       Age?

3.       What time do you usually go to sleep on a weeknight?

4.       How many hours of sleep do you usually get?

5.       Do you remember your dreams?

6.       Have you ever had the same dream more than once?

Explain that dream..

7.       Do you find it easy to fall asleep?

8.       What do you do when you can’t get to sleep?

9.       What do you feel like when you haven’t had enough sleep?

10.   Do you listen to music while you’re going to sleep?

11.   What type of music do you like?

12.   What is the best thing about sleep?

13.      What is your favourite colour?

14.     Do you ever have nightmares?

          Explain that nightmare..

15.   Do you ever sleep with the light on?