Research Into Target Audience - Miss Miller

Research Into Target Audience

It is important that research is carried out before we start to plan our own individual piece because it is good to understand what types of things an audience prefer to see in the thriller genre. This is because we want our thriller piece to include most of the things the audience recommend as these are clearly elements of the thriller genre that create the most surprise, shock, suspense and tension. We asked 40 people as this it is quite a large number and there will be many different opinions included in this group, this is so we can get a clear variety and find out exactly what different people like to see in a thriller genre and to and co-operate all these into our piece as much as we can. We will look deeply into the different results we got an analyse what we think will best suit our thriller narratives and try and include elements of all the results collected.

We have made a collection of pie charts to show our results in a clear and professional way. We made pie charts on the 10 questions that we included in our questionnaire.

The first question we asked our participants was their age. We thought that this would be a suitable question as we know that the age certificate of our production will be either a 15 or an 18 certificate so therefore the participants included in these age groups and older will have the most relevant information for us to use. This is because we can gather the different aspects that people of this age group will prefer to see in a thriller sequence and try and include these in our production. This is because different age groups will prefer different things. For example an older age group would perhaps prefer more mature themes which would be more difficult for our group to come up with as we are much younger and include it in our short thriller sequence. This chart tells us that the majority of the audience with 62% are aged 16-25.  This means mostly teenagers and young adults are the main viewers of thrillers. This means the themes we use don't have to be too mature and we can include ideas we would enjoy to see as we are part of this age bracket.

The next question we asked our participants was their gender. We thought that this would be an appropriate question because we can understand which gender is most likely to be watching our thriller production. This is important because different genders prefer to see different things in a thriller. Although our thriller will  hopefully contain elements of thriller that all our participants enjoy we will try and contain elements that males enjoy as that is the majority of our target audience and that is what they will enjoy the most. The pie chart tells us that the majority of our participants was male with 75%. This means that most males will be viewing our production and therefore we should include more manly elements for example blood, gore and weapons.

The next question we asked the participants of our questionnaire was "What thrillers do you like and why?". We thought that this would be a good question to ask as it gives us an idea of the narrative and different techniques used in these thrillers which captivate an audience. We can therefore get influence from these thrillers and use some ideas in our own thriller production. These thrillers will give us ideas on a narrative, different camera shots, different editing techniques and codes an conventions. The pie chart shows results that "The Shining" was the most popular thriller with the highest percentage of 37%. This means the idea of evil and possession makes the audience the most frightened so this is perhaps and idea we could include in our own thriller sequence.

The next question we asked in our questionnaire was " What type of sub-genre do you like?". We asked this question because the audience usually enjoy a thriller more if there is an added element or genre added to this. However there are so many different types of sub-genres that can be included so we thought this would be a good question to ask to see which ones where the most popular and fit the best with the thriller genre. In our questionnaire we gave three options of sub-genres including sci-fi, horror and action. 50% of our questionnaire participants said they liked a sci-fi sub genre in the thriller genre. We gathered this meant futuristic elements and thought of ways we could perhaps include this in our own thriller production.

The next question we asked was "What do you expect in a thriller film?". We thought that this would be a good question to ask in our questionnaire as it would give us an idea on the things that instantly pop into peoples minds when we present the word thriller to them. The things they say will be their immediate reactions to what they usually expect to find in a thriller film. These are usually the elements that stand out the most to them and therefore are things we should try and include in our own thriller sequence. Our results show that the most popular element that the audience said was death with 32% and possession only a short percentage after with 28%. Therefore we may try and merge these two elements together to make an interesting and captivating narrative.

The next question we asked was "What type of music do you expect in a thriller film?". We thought this was an appropriate question to ask because it can give us an idea of what music is conventional to the thriller genre and therefore use it in our own piece. Our results showed us that the most popular music choice was eery music with 55% and 30% said jumpy. We expected these results as we believe this type of music will create suspense and tension in our thriller and we will include this music in certain parts of our own thriller pieces.

The next question we asked in our questionnaire was "What do you think a good narrative for a thriller film is?". We asked this question to help us get inspiration on a good idea and storyline for our own opening thriller sequences. Our results show that the most popular narrative was a physcopath on the loose and the second most popular narrative was a possessed child. We think that these were quite common narratives for the thriller genres and if presented in a good way then they can come across as very frightening and jumpy which is conventional to the thriller genre. Therefore we will try and include some of these ideas or elements of these ideas in our own thriller production.

The next question in our questionnaire was "What weapons do you like to be used?". We included this question in our questionnaire because we wanted to gather an idea on what weapons are most effective on the audience when used on a character in the film. We calculated in our results that the most popular weapon that was said was a knife with 45% and then a gun at 30%. We expected the knife to be the most common as it is the most weapon and therefore if we decide to use iconography of weapons in our piece then it will be a knife.

The next question we asked was "What would be a typical setting?". We asked this question so we could understand where for our thriller to be set would automatically give of the genre of the film was a thriller. As we want the setting to be conventional to the thriller genre and give the audience an immediate understanding of the genre of the film. Our results showed that the most common and popular setting was the forest with 32%, just slightly less was an abandoned house with 30% and then a grave yard at 25%. We thought that all these settings give off an eery feel and could instantly related back to the thriller genre. We think that a forest would be a perfect setting for our thriller piece because it is open and makes the audience feel vulnerable which is the feelings we want to create for our target audience.

The final question we asked in our questionnaire was "What would you expect the killer to be?". The options we gave the audience was male, female and other. By other things such as paranormal characters and animals were included. We thought this would be a good question to ask because we could see whether the audience believed whether supernatural killers work in the thriller genre. Our results showed that 67% said male, 25% said female and 8% said other. We expected the most common answer to be male as most antagonists in the thriller genre are male with female victims. Therefore we decided that being unconventional to the thriller genre and changing this that this might also act as effective as a male killer.

We are also using vox pops. These are short interviews of people taking our questionnaire and their answers. We are going to use three different people to interview so that we can get a range of different answers. The people we will be interviewing will be of different ages and gender to make our results reliable and varied. The purpose of them is to give evidence of our participants and gather information from our target audience to get ideas that we can influence from and try to include in our
own opening thriller sequence.

This is a copy of the questionnaire we used and also the same questions that we used in our vox pops.

 

In conclusion we found that the results we gathered were very interesting and conventional to the
 thriller genre. The answers were what we expected and we were glad as we thought of a great idea from our analysis of results. The results gave us an idea on the narrative, iconogrpahy and sub genre and we will be using evidence from our results in our own opening thriller sequence. If we were to carry out our research again we would perhaps of changed some of the questions to make them more open and find out more information from the audience. We could also give more options for them to choose from and make the questions more specific nd therefore get clearer and more relevant information.