RESEARCH: Target Audience Research

Before creating my directors pitch of what I intend to do for my final opening scene, I thought it would be a good idea to gather some research on what my target audience would want in it. Here is a copy of the questionnaire I used to research my target audience:

Who undertook this questionnaire?

I needed to make sure my target audience took this questionnaire. At this point I intend to aim my final movie at people around my age of 17, and either gender. These are the details of who filled it out:

• 10 people (7 male, 3 female)
• 9 of these people were aged 16-17, 1 of them was around 30 (I asked one person a bit older just in case I decided to aim the film at a higher age group). 

Questionnaire Results

The answers to this first question were in response to whether they watch films, and importantly everyone who responded did watch films. This shows that films are very popular in the current world, so all opinions of people filling in the questionnaire would be from experience. If no one had seen a film, they would not have seen an opening to a movie, so wouldn't be able to help me much with my final product.

As displayed in the graph above, you can see that not only do people watch films; a lot watch films daily or most at least weekly. The least anyone watched films were monthly, and this was an anomaly which shows the dominance films have on the world today. 40% of my questionnaire responses would be from people that watch films daily, so their opinions will be valued.

For this question, I asked people what their favourite genre was, this will be very important in me deciding which genre to make my opening to minutes of a film to. The majority of people responded saying that they liked comedies, so this would be a genre to seriously consider. Next in line for popularity weremantic films, tied with romcom's. This represents that people like it when romance is tied in with some comedy, so people like to watch something which might make them feel emotional and provide laughter at the same time. Given that 70% of questionnaire responses were from boys, you might expect adventure, horror and action to have been more popular. Therefore, in my final product I think I shall either make it a comedy or romantic.

This question is the opposite to the previous question, discovering what people would see as their least favourite genre. The table shows that it would be a bad idea for me to do a horror as this was many people's least favourite genre. You can see that these results can contradict the previous question, as many people dislike romance. I think this is due to the fact many people who answered 'adventure' in the previous question might be the sort to most dislike romance.

In the table above, you can see that most of the time people watch movies in the convert of a home. People do enjoy going to the cinema, but it is more common for people to watch a movie in a home environment. Therefore, it would make sense for me to make my opening 2 minutes a film to suit being watched at home or at someone else's home.

The results above show that people will watch a film whether they are in company or alone. This again goes to show proof that films are huge and people will watch them in many circumstances. The most popular way to watch a film is with friends, this is probably as it can be fun to discuss a film with your friends, and can be a social activity. The least popular response was 'with your partner', which is probably just due to the fact most the people in the age group wouldn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

In this final graph, we can see that a soundtrack should definitely play over the top of the opening scene I create. 100% of people like it when an opening to a movie has a soundrack, so it is very popular. When my friend and I come to making our final product, I think we will have a song playing over it as this is seems to be what people like.

Question responses to which a table wasn't appropriate for:

Question 8 asked what people's favourite opening scene of a movie were. The answers people gave backed up their responses to previous questions, because the genres of the films they picked were the same genres which they liked. Most the films had an opening with sentiment or on the other hand fast moving action.

Question 9 queried into how I could make my own opening scene effective. These were the answers people wrote: 'Teaser, lots of action, dramatic events, background knowledge, music, explosions, women, suggest what the film is about to entice the viewer straight away, scary, explosions, get viewer involved and immersed.' All of these will be taken into account when my partner and I make our final product.

Here is a video, recording evidence that I actually undertook the questionnaire: