Comparing a range of Primary and Secondary research sources from task 1

Over my time at college I have learnt that there are several different ways in order to collect data, for example you may collect data as Primary research. Primary research is research that you conduct yourself from first hand observation, for example if I wanted to find out the birth date of Gabriele Muccino then I would need to go and interview him to find out the knowledge from first-hand observation such as interviewing him personally. Primary research is a valuable way of collecting data as you are finding out details of the person from them personally, this means there should be no mistakes or false information from collecting the data as primary research. The only negatives to Primary research would be having to put the time and effort into preparing questions for interviews or handing out questionnaires. You may even need to travel to where the destination may be when collecting data. The best way to describe Primary research is to look at it as something you have to put a lot of effort in to when going outside and finding information out yourself like interviewing him personally with sets of questions or making a survey to find out what the public think about him and the movies he has directed, or off this subject it may be that you have to observe particular surroundings to gain knowledge of that environment such as an Ethnographer. Ethnography research is research conducted from the study of people in their natural surroundings. An Ethnographer would gain knowledge from researching people that are in their natural environment by closely observing them and taking notes from face-to-face interviews.

The first source of primary research I done through surveys. At first I began making an online survey for the public to fill out on Survey Monkey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/user/sign-in/?ut_source=anonweb&ut_source2=sem-lp-5 however, shortly after I began creating the survey, I began to realise that you can only ask closed questions which was not very useful for me as most of my survey I had created was made up of open questions which required more than a straight answer. Moving on from Survey Monkey I decided to hand out my own surveys created using a Word document to entice the public into watching his movies; some of the public knew who Gabriele was although plenty of people did not. Many of the answers I received from the surveys was not really the answers that I was looking for, therefore I added pages of stills to my research from plenty of Muccino's movies. I also added pictures of some front covers for the audience to recognise some more of Muccino's directed movies to understand a bit more of who he is. This had worked really well as more and more of the public were understanding who Gabriele is from the type of movies that he directs, this information gave me the answers in which I was looking for in my surveys.

One of my questions from my Survey was do you find Gabriele Muccino inspirational? I chose to ask this question as the answers will help my research by knowing how other people look at Gabriele. I personally really look up to Gabriele as he inspires me to achieve a very good career in the media.

Secondary research is research conducted from invaluable sources. These are second hand observation sources such as asking other people information, reading leaflets or in my case looking through the internet. The positives to this research is that it is much quicker and easier to find the information you need within a click of a button, however this type of research may just be incorrect. Some brochures or internet websites may contain false information that is not true. many news articles may exaggerate the truth a little or add in lies to make the source look more interesting. Most of my research is conducted by secondary research as it is the only sources I have access to, however I have also created surveys, bar charts and pictures to hand out to the public using primary research.

I used Secondary research to gather a brief understanding of his background and various other information. The information I had gathered was his personal details such as his date of birth, where he lives and how his talent was first discovered. This started off on wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Muccino then on IMDb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0610831/ where I discovered which university Muccino came from which then led me to watching many interviews and articles about Gabriele, such as Firstshowing.net where Alex Billington interviews Gabriele about his directed film; Seven Pounds http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/interview-seven-pounds-director-gabriele-muccino/ Another interview would be 'On set with Gabriele Muccino' where Jasper Rees takes Muccino's master class to find out the Do's and Don'ts of Hollywood filmmaking.

The difference between primary and secondary research is that primary research is collected first-hand and secondary research is collected second-hand, I personally believe that it is a lot safer to collect primary research rather than secondary research as it is more valuable and straight forward as you know the information you are collecting is correct, however it does take a lot of time and effort as well as having to travel using many different resources that you may not have. Therefore for this research project, I have mainly used secondary research as it benefits me with the resources that I have available. You would use Primary research

During my research of my media hero, I began noticing many more interesting facts that I had no idea about to start with, such as finding out that Gabriele Muccino had attended university in Rome, studying Italian literature. This research helped my project as I found out how Muccino extended his knowledge and achieved success.

My research methods have allowed me to collate my project in a particular way. The understanding of primary and secondary research allowed me to know the difficulties and challenges within the media industry and how to tackle them. I have also learnt how Muccino has got to where he is now and where he started off, for me these are very important facts to know as it ensures I have prepared for what the media industry make be like when I set off finding my own career path.