Audience research

This is a post displaying my audience research. To research I decided to use the method of questionnaires because I felt it was the most effective way to gain as much information as possible. I had gathered this audience research before christmas however, having had trouble creating graphs in Numbers (a Mac program), we eventually decided to transfer our file into Excel. We have since been able to create graphs and display results, as shown below.

This graph and table shows the general consumption of films in different age groups. This shows that people in a variety of age groups are watching more than 1 film a week and with significant numbers in the 7+ category it could be as many as two films per week. It shows that the audience has experience and exposure to a range of film product. There is no correlation beween age and number of films watched per month. This could be because our sample of participants was very small, it included only 20 different people. 14 of our participants were under the age of 26, this was the younger end of our sample. This may have affected our results and prevented them from showing the correlation. However, our target audience for our production is 12-25 so we are not concerned about the skew towards a younger audience.

15 out of 20 respondents expected a production company to be introduced in a thriller opening. In response to this we will include our production company logo at the beginning of our opening sequence.  13 out of 20 respondents expected actors and actresses to be introduced. From product research I have found that other films, such as ''The Usual Suspects' and 'Rear Window', have included actors and actresses introductions at the start of the film.  Therefore, I can see that I am getting the same results out of my audience research and my product research.  Which means we should prioritise the inclusion of the introductions.  18 out of 20 people believed that the scene should be set in the opening to a thriller. We hope to do this by introducing main characters,  location and plot.  6 out of 20 people decided they expected slow paced music however, 10 out of 20 people expected fast paced music. A further 2 respondents expected music with lyrics. There is a balance between the fast and slow choices, this could be because most thrillers include both as is appropriate.  We have decided to choose music that is both fast and slow to reflect our results, this changes the mood and suspense throughout the production. We may use the fast paced music for the more exciting parts and the slow paced music for the more suspenseful parts. 

 

We asked this question because we were intrigued as to what people most watched on television. Although these results don't necessarily have an influence on our production because they show that a lot of respondents watch comedy and that is not appropriate for a thriller. However, we've learnt that a quarter of respondents watch police dramas and almost half watch documentaries. Police dramas usually have police detectives, a similar character to thriller detectives. Also documentaries are about real life it gives them and us an impression of what the film should be like

This table shows that a massive 14 out of 20 people believed that it is not important for thrillers to be rated 15 certificate because it is mostly about how it's filmed and how good, exciting and original the story is. However, a small 6 out of 20 people believed that a 15 certificate was need in order to make a god thriller film because they believed that it allows the creators to use darker subjects and also make it more scary and realistic.

A massive 18 out of 20 people said that psycological thriller were their favourate, i believe this is because it keeps the audienece on edge and this is what the audience said they wanted in other results. Technological was also quite popular, 8 people said that they like this type of film. As a group we decided that we would make a mixture of these two main choices, that is how we started to develop our ideas for our film.

People expect many diffrent things from thrillers as people have diffrent favourates and opinions. However, people seemed to pic up on the fact most thrillers have fast paced action and cuts so some people selected that, In our production we will be using fast cuts and creating suspense We will build suspense by using fast and slow paced mysterious music and by using fast cuts. Also we shall include a plot twist for a bigger effect.

Many people selected very famous films as their favourate due to the fact it may be the only thriller film they have seen, however, most if not all films above our group have seen and having taken all methods of sound, shots and editing into account. We will use many features that are used in the films mentioned above.

15 out of 20 candidates believe that resolved endings are better than cliffhangers. The main reason for this was that they wanted to know what happens in the end, they dont want to feel like the film was left unfinished. Also many people exclaimed their hate for sequals as they believe there has not been many films that have better sequals than the orginal. 6 out of 20 candidates believed cliffhangers were better because they like the fact you dont know what is going to happen or how it ends because it allows them to create their own ending in their head. Others prefered cliffhagers due to sequals however this was not a very popular response.