Research into target audience - Miss Miller

My research was carried out to help me and my group understand more about what the audience enjoys and what they want to see within a thriller film. It helped us figure out what is useful to have in our film sequence in order to get the audience interested. We carried out our questionnaire on 40 different people to get a good variety of opinions and interests, so that our results give a wide range of the audiences preferences. Our results are going to help us decide on the main codes and conventions that we are going to use, and what elements can boost in our narrative to make out opening sequence even more effective and exciting. Below is the questionnaire we used in our research and a few examples of the results we got through vox pops.








My Vox pops included a few of the people I interviewed for my questionnaire, I made them so that I could give an example of the whole questioning process. They also allow the viewer to see the full answer from the participants especially of the open questions that we gave them to elaborate on so that we could get a good detailed answer on questions that needed to be explained. The Vox pops are also evidence that I researched my questions and is a record of some results we collected.

Questionnaire

Q1:  What is your gender?  Male    Female

Q2:  How old are you?      11-14      15-18      19-22      23+

Q3: What is your favourite thriller film and why?  

Se7en     Shutter Island       Fight club        The Shining        Zodiac       Other

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Q4: What is your favourite thriller subgenre?    Psychological    Action   Crime    Other      

Q5: What gender do you prefer your victims to be?    Male    Female

Q6: What do you like about thriller films?

Hidden Identities     Victims     Suspense     Shock    Surprise    Other

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Q7: Where do you prefer your thrillers to be set?    Rural    Urban   Space    Creepy houses    Creepy forests

Q8: Do you prefer gory thrillers?    Yes    No

Q9: What’s your favourite type of murder weapon and why?

Knife     Axe     Gun     Rope    Other

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Q10: Do you prefer the antagonist’s identity to be secret?     Yes     No 

The first question we asked was the gender of the participants, we asked this so that we could get an idea about the differences between males and females, like and dislikes in a thriller film. From this question we do not get and particular ideas for our film but it did help us improve on the target audiences desires as the other questions showed us which gender prefers what. 55% of the participants we asked were male and 45% were female this show that men were more willing to take about thriller and therefore could possibly enjoy them more.

Finding out the age of the participants was useful in a similar way to the gender as it helped us understand which ages preferred too see what in the thriller films. It helped us to decided which conventions to use that would be most effective with out target audience and which would intrigue them the most. Over all the most people to fill out our questionnaire were aged 23+ (shown in purple) but there wasn't much difference between them and the participants over 14. The age group 11-14 (shown in blue) had the least amount of participants. we took this on board and have aimed our target audience to be 15+ as it is targeting the most appropriate ages who will want to watch our film.

In our questionnaire we asked which was the participants favourites film out of a list we chose. We asked this so that we could get a feel of which theme they liked and what they preferred the narrative to be based on. From the research into this question it is clear that the 'Fighter Club' was the most popular (shown in green) and in second was 'Shutter Island (shown in red). Both of these films have a strange narrative where the characters have some sort of mental weakness, and an unknown element about the antagonist. This helped my group and I decided on how we wanted to show the antagonist and that we wanted him to be mysterious by not giving much away to the audience. We asked why they liked their chosen film so that we could incorporate their opinions in with the rest of our information.

As well as asking the audience to select a certain film we also asked them to select their favourite sub-genre. This was so that we could analyse what other elements they like to have in the narrative as well as the thriller side. The sub genres they could choose are listed above, the most popular was the psychological, 45% of the audience selected this as their preferred sub genre. From this we chose to have a psychological section in the narrative to gain more interest from the audience, we did this so that they would be more intrigued and the film would be more effective and particular to what they want to see.

The next question was about the victim, we asked if they preferred to see a male or female victim in the thriller films they watch. Most of the audience said they preferred to have a female victim rather and a male victim which only got 15%. We presumed we was going to be using a female victim because we thought it would be the most effective, the stereotypical female in a thriller film is weak and an easy target for the antagonist so we are going to stick with that so that our film follows the codes and conventions.

Codes and conventions were also asked about in our questionnaire, we asked the audience what they liked about thriller films from the list above and why they enjoyed it. The most popular answers were shock and victims. One of the participants said she enjoys being shocked because "it excites" her, this showed us how the audience feel about some elements in film, which helped us understand what they like and want to see in a thriller. We associated some of the ideas from our results in with ours so that our opening sequence was intriguing and effective.

In the research we also asked which setting they preferred the thriller to be located out the list above. The abandoned house option was the most chosen (shown in green) meaning the audience like to have the film set in an unknown mysterious place which and possibly isolated and deserted. The results from this question are one of the most useful because deciding on the location or setting a film is the most important part if it isn't right the whole film could be much less effective and scary. Although Abandoned houses was the most popular we chose the second most which was abandoned forest, we thought we could use a forest better with our narrative and it would also be easy for us to make.

One of the short questions was "do you enjoy gory thrillers". This is a simple closed questions which they could answer with yes or no. We asked this to find out if the audience liked to see blood and gore in the film or whether they like it to be covered and clean. 70% of the participants liked to see gore whilst watching a thriller, they liked to see lost of blood and violence. In our opening sequence our victim get kidnapped so because of these result we have decided to make it very brutal and violent. Having the gore and disturbance in out film will intrigue the audience to watch on as they like having that element within a thriller film.

One of the open questions asked was about the murder weapons used in a thriller genre. We asked "what is your favourite type of murder and why?" they participants had a list to chose from which they could then elaborate one. We asked this particular question so that we could get an idea about the smaller detail in the film and what they liked to see. The top three were axe, knife and gun, the most seen murder weapons used. One of the participants said that she liked to see a knife being used because it is "exciting, quick and powerful". Having the answers so tight together made it hard to decide on what we were going to use because all three were popular and conventional, we chose to go with a knife in the end because we thought it was the most stereotypical of a thriller film, which would make ours even more conventional and exciting.

The last questions was "Do you like the antagonist to have a hidden identity.", the was another simple closed question which they could answer with yes or no. my group asked this so that we could see what the audience like about the antagonists involvement with the film. It showed us whether they like them to be more unpredictable and unknown or whether they like to see who they are and what they are like. 90% of the audience like the antagonist to have a hidden identity so that it leaves them with more mystery and suspense. So we chose to have the antagonist hidden, we want them to be unpredictable, so that tension is built for the audience.

My research was helpful when planning the groups opening sequence it helped us decide on sections of our film some minor details and some important. For example it helped us decide on the murder weapon we wanted to use and on he gender of the victim, another would be the identity of the antagonists and how we wanted the audience see them. All of these are codes and conventions that need to be considered and decided on carefully. The research helped us understand what the audience prefer to see not just what is stereotypical, it let us see what they wanted and what their preferences were. We will involve the results in with our ideas to make our film the best it can be, we are going to use some of the information we collected to make our film what they audience want and to help us decide on assets which are important to the narrative and effects of the film. If we could carry out or research again I would changed some the questions so the audience would have to think in more depth about the small details of the film that could be more effective, so that we could make ours more emotional and relatable for the target audience.