Research

Audience Survey

For our research we must conduct an audience survey to give us some information on what our audience wants to see in a thriller film. To do this my group decided to conduct a pilot survey before making our real survey to give us an idea on any adjustments or adaptations we may need to make. 

The questions we asked were:
1. How old are you?
15-17
18+
2. Do you prefer 15 or 18 films?
15
18
3. What genre of film do you prefer?
Action
Horror
Comedy
Romance
Thriller
Western
other
4. Do you pay attention to title sequences?
Yes
No
5. What type of opening/introduction do you prefer?
slow
quick
6. What is your favourite type of thriller?
Horror
Crime
Psychological
Drama
Romance
Action
Other
7. What do you expect to see in a thriller film?

Our pilot survey was very useful because it highlighted some of the key mistakes we made when designing it. Firstly our second question was useful for determining whether our audience would be more interested in seeing a 15 age rated film or an 18. This would then give us an idea of which age rating we should make our coursework. However our second question definitely needed to be re-worded as it didn't make sense. I don't think our third question was relevant as it had nothing to do with the thriller genre, therefore I have learnt that I will not need to include this question in my next survey. Question four will be useful for understanding whether it would worth putting most of our effort into the title sequences. However this question could gives us a 50/50 answer meaning it would not be giving us any information at all. This means that I have learnt that next time we should include space for people to explain what aspects of the titles they prefer, for example, music, font, animations. Our fifth question displayed similar problems because it also has the ability to give us a 50/50 answer, therefore I have learnt that in our next survey we should ask for reasons why they've answered yes or no. Our answers to question six were very varied which has not helped me in understanding which type of thriller the audience prefers. However we made one fundamental mistake of including sub-genres and hybrids of thriller in the same question. Therefore, I have learnt that this question needs lots of adjustments in order to make more sense. 

Our final question was useful to us because it gave us lots of ideas about what an audience expects to see in a thriller film. Alternatively, it gave us so much information it became unhelpful because the answers were very varied meaning we wouldn't be able to include every suggestion we were given. However, we will be able to use the answers from this question to structure a new question where you can chose an answer, making our results more limited and helpful.