Research into Target Audience - Miss Miller

Research - Questionnaire

The purpose of a questionnaire is to find out relevant facts on a particular topic, that will be useful for a larger project. We asked random people aged between 10 and 18 to answer our questionnaire relating to the thriller genre. In this blog post, I will use pie charts to show the results of the closed questions of the questionnaire, and then further explain the results. The results to the remaining open questions will not be represented with pie charts because they contain qualitative data.

 

Question 1 of the questionnaire - closed question

The majority of the people that answered this survey were evidently aged between 15 and 17. This is helpful to my group, as the target audience for our film is 15+. From this, we can determine that the results from this questionnaire will definitely contribute positively to our thriller opening scene. However, we also have input from slightly younger (12-14) and older (18+) people, meaning that we may be able to create a thriller that appeals to a widely varied audience.

 

Question 2 of the questionnaire - closed question

Here, we can see that over half of the people who answered the survey were female. This means that our thriller may be influenced to include less conventional themes, due to girls not approving of the typical vulnerable female victim. Our thriller will also appeal to a wider audience due to this, as people like thrillers with a unique plot.

Question 3 of the questionnaire - closed question

These results show that most people who answered the survey prefer films with a certificate 15. This is helpful to my group as our thriller, as previously mentioned, will be targeted to those aged 15 and above. Again, it further suggests that the results of this questionnaire will be relevant in creating our thriller opening scene.

Question 6 of the questionnaire - closed question

 For this question, half of the people asked said that they only have an interest in sequels "sometimes". Furthermore, less than a quarter have an interest in sequels, and under half do not. This suggests that these people judge films straight away, and wish to support a franchise when they enjoy the first film. Despite the fact that we will never make the rest of our thriller film, or a sequel, these results mean that we must keep the audience enticed and entertained to escape negative judgement.

Questions 4 and 5, and 7 through to 15, were open questions and produced qualitative data. Therefore, these results cannot be accurately represented using pie charts. The results of the open questions tell us many things that we should include in our thriller, or think about when creating our thriller. For instance, from the results of question 15, we know that most people wish for the purpose of our thriller to shock/surprise the audience, and create a suspenseful atmosphere. To expand, some of those who answered this question also feel that the purpose should be to frighten/scare and entertain. We will consider this when creating our thriller opening, and make sure that there is a lot of suspense included. The suspenseful atmosphere will be useful in creating tension leading up to a shock/surprise.

The results of this questionnaire is helpful to my group because we have a basic guide to what we should include in our opening scene. We know that people do not want to see too many stereotypes in our film opening, as this is repetitive, boring and predictable. Leading on from this, most people want to see different and unconventional characters, as a unique twist for the film. We also know from question 12 that most people do not want to see a sub-genre thriller film, such as crime thrillers or action thrillers. This is good for us because we were not planning on making a thriller film that has a sub-genre. Furthermore, we will include many sound effects, as this was the most popular answer to the question 'what sound effects do you expect to see in a thriller?"

The purpose of this questionnaire was to research what the public wanted to see from our thriller film. We have decided that we will follow these results as a guide to making our thriller film. This is because we want the audience to be engaged with the film, and this research provides us with the knowledge of how to achieve this.

This is a video of one person answering my questionnaire.

Our questionnaire was as follows:

1. What age are you?
10 – 11
12 – 14
15 – 17
18 +

2. What gender are you?
Male
Female

3. What age certificate do you prefer?
12
15
18

4. What are you favourite aspects of watching a thriller?

5. What do you expect to see in thrillers?

6. Do you have an interest in sequels made?
Yes
No
Sometimes

7. What type of sounds would you like to hear in a thriller?

8. What characters would you like to see in a thriller and why?

9. Would you like to see conventional characters? Such as the typical blonde victim. Would you like to see different characters?

10. What type of actors would you like to be used?

11. What type of setting would you like to see?

12. Would you enjoy other sub-genres to be used? If so, which ones? For example, crime thrillers (skyfall).

13. Do you have any ideas of narrative that could be used?

14. What would you not like to see in a thriller film?

15. What would you like the purpose to be?