Week 6 — Using Data blog 2

In week 6 the CIU111 lecture was all about using data and I found it interesting that data can be used on creative projects and as a way to test your work.
After reading the week’s topic and attending the lecture, I feel that I now understand how useful data is in regards to knowing what people want. It can be used to understand your market and most of the time, this information is easy to gather, saving you valuable time.
Collecting data is a valuable tool, and one I will be packing into my filmmaker’s toolbelt when creating any future projects.
As a filmmaker, it would be beneficial for me to be able to source data at various stages of production. For example; when scouting shooting locations, I could use data collection to find areas that are most compatible for shooting. My idea would be to travel to locations and hand out surveys with questions like…
· What type/style of films do you like?
· Would you help with funding if a film was to be made in your town?
· Would you provide the film crew with locations?
· Are you a local business that would like to collaborate?
Using this data, I could then make a stronger decision before choosing a location as it would be more beneficial to find communities who want to be involved in productions. A good example of this is when J.J Abrams filmed Super 8. They had a lot of people from the town working on set and providing them with their homes, shops and pretty much the whole town.
I have now figured out that to create something good, we need to find out what the audience wants because we are creating films for them so, by using data and acting on the results is important.
In the following link Tom Huddleston talks about how traditional television viewership is almost dead and that less people are going to the movies. He also talks about how Netflix is able to use data collection to find out what we, the audience, want to see more and less of.