JC - Audience Research results

We conducted audience research both information about the people we were surveying and therefore what age and gender we are likely to gear our film towards, and what their likes and dislikes were within the thriller genre, what they thought of our concept. In total, we surveyed 21 people.

Primarily, we asked our audience which age category they belonged to and what gender they were; we found that 95.2% of the people we surveyed were aged 10-21. We also found that 61.9% of the people we surveyed were male. These two background questions were extremely useful to us, because they suggested that the majority of people we surveyed belonged to the target audience we had set aside - male teenagers.

Following this, we asked people about their generic expectations of thriller films; we gave them a list of locations to choose from and asked them to rate them according to how appropraite they thought they were for a thriller opening. Strangely, they thought that a lake was the most appropriate location. However, their second most popular choice was a warehouse - which we intend to use in our opening. Following this, we asked them which type of opening they preffered: Character exposition; location exposition; random sequence; linear narrative, or other. We found - as we wanted - that character exposition was the preffered choice. Finally, we asked them whether they preffered linear or montage openings; 63.2% said that they preferred a linear opening.

Our final area of reserach was to test our product on the people. When we asked them what they thought our title connoted or symbolised, none of them thought of the same idea as we had. Whilst this could be seen as confusing, this may also draw more people to see our film as they would be uncertain as to what the idea was behind our film, and may be enticed to find out what it was about. Our final question asked the people to read through our treatment and rate it out of ten, giving a reason for their choice. Despite wording the question appropriately (ie. stating 'ten being best'), some people were still confused as to whether or not to rate the film as a 1 or a 10. However, despite our mixed bag (an overall rating of 6.29%), the most selected score was an 8, which was encouraging for us.

Our audience research was useful, because on the whole, it reflected what we want our audience to get from our film. Furthermore, it provides us with legitimacy to carry on with our plans, as the audience's views tend to agree with the style, form and conventions of our opening sequence.