overdue audience research

 1. What is your favourite movie genre?

·         Thriller-1

·         B. Horror-4

·         C. Drama-0

·         D. Comedy-2

·         E. Action-9

From this I can learn that a generalised audience is not aware of the thriller genre as a whole and that they might confuse horror with thriller as it is more popular and most thrillers some across as horrors because they share some conventions.

2. What do you see in the opening of a movie that you enjoy? Two lines max

• Interesting opening credits
• Nice establishing shots
• Something that introduces the story
• Nothing should be too simple
• Cool opening effects
• Story should be not too simple
• Opening music should be good
• Music should be suspenseful
• It shouldn’t be too inactive
• Something should happen
• There should be lots of confusion
• It should be really smooth
• The plot should be clever
• The music should have something to do with the rest of the film
• There should be something impressive right from the start
• It should grab your attention

From this I can take any number of ideas that can be easily applied to the editing of our thriller project. You learn that there should be suspense in everything-the music, the effects and the setting. You can also take bigger things such as story and plot ideas from this such as “it should be complicated” or otherwise.

3.  If you had to choose a Thriller sub-genre what would it be?

• Crime-Thriller-13
• Psychological Thriller-3

From this it is easy to learn that the general audience is not into psychological thrillers perhaps due to the sometimes overcomplicated plots and strange themes or perhaps due to the fact the psychological sub genre is not as well promoted and created as the crime thriller.

4. If you had to choose, what would be your favourite Thriller movie?

·         Saw films-7-terror

·         Donnie Darko-terror/complicated plot

·         Inception-complicated themes

·         Kill bill-high action

·         Van Helsing-high action/good effects

·         The matrix-high action

·         BBC’s production of the 39 steps-well acted/suspenseful

·         The great escape-high action

·         The godfather-characters/plot/story/themes

·         Memento-clever well thought out plots

From each of these you can take different ideas about thriller films that people enjoy

5. What do you like about that movie? I.e. the tension it creates. Two lines max

• the plot
• the music
• the action
• the horror
• the use of plot
• the storyline
• the story
• the story
• the way it all fit together
• how clever it was
• the action
• the action
• how clever the story and plot was
• how scary the villain was
• how terrifying the villain was
• how strange it was

This more specifically tells you what was liked about the film. It helps to back up the previous answers.

6. What setting do you think is best for a high tension thriller? One line max

• in a dark warehouse
• in a small village
• inside a characters head
• it should turn out to all be a dream
• in a creepy alley
• spread out across the country
• in a big city
• it should move from place to place
• a abandoned theme park
• graveyard
• wide open space like a field
• abandoned school
• forest
• abandoned factory
• old museum
• spooky wood

There may be little we can learn from this question due to the answers being very scattered from each other. However answer number eight could be very useful.

8. What in the opening to a Thriller would keep you asking questions? Two lines max

• I’m not sure-6
• Not much of the plot should be given away-4
• You should be confused by it-4
• A complex plot-2

This tells you a lot specifically of course it’s important to try to use all of these techniques but it’s important to know how the audience is going to react to these techniques. Also the fact that six people were unsure shows again that the general audience has little knowledge of genre or film techniques.

9. Give your age?

• 11-3
• 12-1
• 13-1
• 14-1
• 15-5
• 16-3
• 17-2

Of course appealing to a large range of ages is a good idea its easier of course to focus on a specific age and also to aim for an older age range as it will broaden the target market and make it easier to fill any specific gaps in the market.

10. Your status (lower class/middle class/upper class)?

• Lower-5
• Middle-11
• Upper-0

This is just an aid to help slim down our target market but it might tell us that we don’t need to be overly intelligent with the script and also that we need to keep it action packed and suspenseful as this is keyed more at the middle class than other markets. Also appealing to a middle class audience will also attract small numbers of other class markets.

11. Do you like intelligent well thought out films?

·         Yes-12

·         No-4

This tells us we need to be careful because if the plot and use of effects and editing gets too confusing it may directly affect the audience’s opinion of how well thought out the opening is.

13. Do you like foreign films?

·         Yes-4

·         No-12

This perhaps shows that the general audience are unaware of foreign films and it shows that we are to aim for a market which is not too culturally diverse; this puts less worry on us about how certain groups are represented.

14. What is your favourite type of music?

·         Rock-4

·         Pop-4

·         Rap-6

·         Classic-2

·         Country-0

This shows us that when composing tracks for use in the thriller we need to think about using instruments or sounds associated with rock and pop as they are the most liked genres. We wouldn’t use rap because it would be hard to use it to good effect in a thriller.

15. What was the last film you watched?

·         Don’t remember-6

·         Harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2-3

·         The smurf movie

·         Cars 2

·         The hangover part 2

·         The green hornet

·         The inbetweeners movie

·         Keeping mum

·         Kill bill

These films to have been seen the first time are obviously good but repeated viewing indicates a favour for those films in particular. One can take from these films idea about plot.

16. What was the last thriller film you watched?

·         Don’t remember-11

·         The matrix

·         The godfather

·         Saw 4

·         V for vendetta

·         Donnie Darko

This again perhaps shows ignorance of thrillers by the general public but it also shows that while some of these appeared as favourites the ones that didn’t must also be popular and we can take lessons from them about what it is that makes them great

17. What did you like about it? Two lines max

·         The characters

·         The storyline

·         The scares

·         The storyline

·         The storyline

18. What did you not like about it? Two lines max

·         How complicated it was

·         The characters weren’t likeable

·         The complicated story

·         nothing

·         nothing

These are obviously things to steer clear of.

Evaluation of audience research

Our audience research was very important in editing as it helped us to narrow down a target market and decide what was best to do with the shots we had. We narrowed down our target market substantially to just a few details. Our audience is young between 15 and 18 perhaps even 19, they are intelligent and reflect that in their choice of films, they are most likely middle class and either quite well educated or just smart. They have good varied personal taste in music and can adapt to like most things. They are not particularly far from our culture that is to say that they are British and most likely do not take an interest in how foreigners are represented.

This means we should make a smart film, with young actors and not worrying too much about our representation of certain groups.