AS Media
G321
Foundation
Portfolio
Thursday 20th November
Audience Research
In today’s lesson we discussed starting our audience research. For our audience research we need to find out what our target audience likes and what they expect to see. Our target audience is a niche of both females and males from ages 15-35.
We can conduct our audience research in a number of ways;
- Questionnaire
- Interviews
- Focus Groups
- Online Survey
In order to collect a range of results and collect lots of evidence we're going to do more than one of the possible methods. We're going to do a questionnaire, interviews and an online survey so we can collect lots of evidence and be sure we know exactly what our demographic wants.
1. Questionnaire
After deciding which methods of research we were going to do we started preparing for it. We decided to do a questionnaire so we can collect some quantative data to analyse for our research. We started by having a discussion about what we want to get out of our research; what do we need to know that we can apply to our thriller opening. After deciding this we constructed our questionnaire.
2. Interviews
We decided to conduct interviews so we can get some qualitative data as well as some quantiative. For our interviews we used the questions from our questionnaire but left them open so the participants could answer with anything they wanted. This gave us a broader range of answers and even some new ideas we hadn't thought of.
Sixteen people filled out our questionnaire, the majority of which were ages 15-18. I think this is good because they're one of the major age groups thriller films are aimed at. We also managed to get a sample from other age groups however not as much as 15-18s.
The majority of these people came from our own sixth form, we also had some from some external sources.
From our questionnaire we can clearly see that we did question more females than males, however the numbers are still quite similar. This means we have a good range of feedback from people of both genders.
Our interviews provided us with different answers to what we previously had. We think we definitely got more information rfom our interviews however we feel we could have done better in quantity of interviews. We think more people could have provided a larger number of results for us and would have been more helpful too.
3. Online Survey
We decided to do an online survey so we could reach a wider range of people and ages. We created our survey on 'freeonlinesurvey.com' a website for making online surveys.
This is the link to our survey
These are the results of our online sruvey, as you can see we have a wider range of different answers because most of the questions were open ended
We found out from our questionnaire most of the participants watch thriller films between 3-5 times a month. This is good because it means our target audience has seen a range of thrillers and know what they like. However one quarter of participants said they rarely watched thriller films, this could be a problem because if they haven't seen many they may just be answering based on their knowledge of one film.
Over half of the people we asked had seen more than ten thriller films. This means most of the partcipants have a good knowledge of thriller films and therefore their answers will be beneficial to us because of this.
Exactly half of the people who took the questionnaire said their favourite thriller film was Se7en. From this we can see we need to look closely at the opening of Se7en and try to determine what's effective about it and see if we can try to incorporate some of the ideas and themes used in it.
The results from 'Why do you like thrillers?' varied quite a lot. Plot twists is the most popular option however it would be difficult for us to create a plot twist since they're usually featured either at the climax of the movie or at the very end. Despite this we can see tension and suspense, characters and the plot all tie for second most popular. From this we can see that plot and characters are very important to keep the viewers interested, we will use characters and plot in our thriller opening in order to satisfy our audience.
Most of our participants said that their favourite event in a thriller film is puzzle with murder coming in second. Because of this we will be sure to include some kind of puzzle or question that the audience will have to figure out. This puzzle will be based around murder in order to fill our viewers needs.
Over half of participants said they thought soundtrack best created suspense in thriller films. Because of this we'll give careful consideration to our background music and what diegetic or non-diegetic sounds we put into our opening. We can see dialogue is the least popular option leading us to think we shouldn't have any characters conversing in our thriller opening.
When asked what they expect to see in thriller films most participants chose mystery. This is one of the key themes in thriller films and we'll be sure to factor it into our thriller opening. The second most chosen option was death, this also being a major factor in thriller films, this is also something we will put in our opening to keep our audience satisfied.
From question one we can see the majority of the people who took the survey are still females.
From the ages question we can see specific ages instead of catergorised ages, this means we can see which age person chose which option and this will give us a more specific view for each age.
From our third question we already have a larger range of answers, some people are more specific in terms of their answers. One person answers 'Depends on the time of year' this is a valid point for us to consider, time of year should be considered when we think about setting in our opening.
Many of the people who took the survey had seen lots of thriller films some going into very high numbers up to and including fifty. This means participants have seen a large range of films some more than others. The high numbers means they'll have a good knowlegde of thriller films and will give relevant and informative answers in the survery.
Most people said they like thriller films because of the suspense and tension featured in the films. We will try to incorporate this into our thriller opening because we can see the majority are going to want to see these themes in our opening.
Favourite events in thriller films was most popularly mysteries and puzzles closely followed by plot twists and cliff hangers. This show the audience like things that keep them feeling anxious and on the edge of their seat. Although we can't really use plot twists in a thriller opening we can use a sort of cliff hanger to keep our audience guessing and wanting to see more.
In the survey most participants said they thought soundtrack best created suspense, this result was also seen in our questionnaire so we can see we have reliable results. This reinforces the fact we have to pay close attention to what kind of sounds we use in our thriller; diegetic, non-doegetic, low or high pitched or if we choose to use crescendos or dimmuendos.
