Outcomes of Audience Research

One day after creating and sharing my questionnaire, I decided to look at the results so far. The website I used allows you to view the results in a donut chart, making it easy to decipher the majority.

Gender

The gender of my audience is almost equal, however the majority is female at 61%. Because they are split very closely, I do not want to make my film opening overly feminised to ensure it still appeals to the male population of my audience. However, using female characters will be a much subtler way to appeal to female viewers as they can relate.

Age

The most common age range of the audience was 16-20 years old. This is very similar to my planned target audience, meaning I can hopefully succeed in making it appeal to the viewers.

Favourite Genre

Most of my audience prefer horror films, which works very well with the plan for my film opening. The second most preferred is thriller. With this knowledge, I plan to add aspects of thriller to my film opening in order to appeal to a wider audience.

The next question asked the respondents to list a film of their specified genre that they believe has a good opening. I was most interested in seeing what horror films would be listed so that I could research them and include some of their traits in my own film. Three quarters of the horror respondents listed The Woman In Black as a film with a good opening.

 Opinions

One of the questions in my questionnaire was: "Fill in the blank: if the opening of a film was ____, I would not want to continue watching the film". This was an important part of my research as it allowed me to find out what my audience did not like so that I knew what not to include in my opening. Here's how they answered:

• "Bad quality"
• "Not HD"
• "Boring"
• "Boring"
• "Boring"
• "Bad quality"
• "Scary"
• "Overly slow and drawn out"
• "Bad quality"
• "Boring"
• "Boring"
• "Boring"
• "Badly edited (ie: continuity errors)"

The most common things my audience did not like in film openings was if they were boring or of lower quality. To avoid these, I will make sure to ask people's opinions when editing my video to make sure it is exciting and engages the audience. I'll also double check for continuity errors while editing. Using a high quality camera when filming will ensure it looks professional.

Another one of my questions was designed to help me include things my audience would like. I asked  "Why do you like this opening?", in regards to their answer of a previous question. They answered:

• "Eerie and gives a good sense of the plot"
• "It ties in later with the film"
• "Because it's engaging and not boring"
• "It's very tense and is leading up to a very good plot"
• "Eerie"
• "Shows a good idea of the plot"
• "Sets the scene. Instantly engages the viewer"
• "Very interesting and catches the eye of the audience"
• "Tense atmosphere"
• "It's amusing and you get drawn in"

Most of the answers refer to the atmosphere and the sense of plot of the film. I think my group will succeed in offering these desirable traits as a creepy and tense atmosphere is easily created through editing and our plot has contextual clues. Other comments like the opening "set(ting) the scene" and being "interesting" are all good ones to take into consideration. To set the scene, I will use a panning shot of our location. I believe our film opening should be "interesting" as our plot is quite unusual and so will hopefully engage the audience.