Ethnography Proposal

1) What type of group of people are you planning to study?
Our group is planning to study the people that frequent the movie theater, in particular, the movie theater lobby. We will be observing groups of people and their actions in the lobby surrounding at two different movie theaters located in College station and Bryan. We plan to study the different cliques and groups that pass through the environment. We will study the people that frequent the area at specific times and the types of people as well. The pre-movie and post-movie habits will be observed and well documented as well.


2) What do you want to or expect to learn from these people?
We want to learn the types of interactions and activities that take place in the movie theater lobby. We expect to see a significant difference in the people in both lobbies. We suspect that the College Station movie theater will have more college students opposed to the Bryan theater which we expect to find a variety of high school kids, families, older folk, and locals. We expect to find more interactions in the Bryan theater because of the variety of people as well as the variety of foods and the presence of a small cafe. We hope to see what uses the lobby have besides purchase of snacks. 


3) How you are going to study them two hours per week?
We will go at different hours of the day on different days of the week to explore the environment. We will also immerse ourselves by observing in the lobby, seeing a movie, and study the crowd in the same particular movie after it is over. This will help us experience the full movie feel opposed to just observing in the lobby. Do the particular movies watched affect the interactions in the lobby afterword. We will also observe the groups of people that form outside the theater.



4) What quantitative data would you record?
We will collect the general number of people in the lobby as well as general age range, sex, group size, time of day, date, length of time spent in lobby, number of people buying snacks/eating, estimated amount of money spent.


5) What qualitative data would you record?
We would record the type of interaction we observe such as waiting quietly or talking in a group. If they seem lost in getting to a particular theater. Types of activities being observed. Uses people have for surrounding. If it seems the people enjoyed the movie they watched by their actions after the movie. Differences in interaction of waiting in lobby vs. waiting in line.

6) How are you planning to interact with the people you are observing?
initially we will take a sit-back-and-watch approach but overtime we may ask people for their opinion of movie, theater, differences between the theaters. We may also ask whether the services provided (XD,  3D, seating) influence their choice or is it location or a combination.