SECTION FOUR : AUDIENCE RESEARCH

In order to find out what we should include in our Thriller, the group created an audience questionnaire. We distributed the questionnaire to people within our films age bracket. The questions asked, where:

1)What Genre of film do you enjoy?

Thriller     Action    Comedy   Romance

- This question  enabled us to single out the most popular genre for our target audience, and perhaps show us to include some elements of other preferred genres in the thriller (eg-romantic sub plots if romance was most preferred)


2) What is your favourite element of a thriller?

Plot      Suspense      Twist

- This question would help us to find out which element of a thriller to incorporate into our production, or if we were to include them all, which one to use most.

3)What would you like to see in a thriller?

_______________________________________________

- This question allowed a broader variety of answers as the audience could write their own ideas, this would provide us with an idea of what to include to suit our audience

4)Do you think thrillers should be more about 'Mind Games' or be more graphic?

Graphic      Mind Games

- This enabled us to find out our audiences preference and whether we should incorporate things into/change our narrative.

5)Why would you watch a thriller?

__________________________________________

- Again, this question allows us to receive a broader variety of answers and gives a general idea of what our audience would like to see.

6)How many thrillers have you seen?

1-5    5-10   10-15   15+

- This question enabled us to find out whether our audience was familiar with thrillers (5-10/10-15), had seen a few (1-5) or were keen 'thriller fans' (15+). This was essential in figuring out what type of audience we where dealing with (ie- niche, mainstream, etc).

7) What kind of lighting do you expect to see?

Low Lighting      Well Lit      Both

- This allowed us to find out what sort of lighting to include in our production

8)Do you consider the 'ocean' films to be thriller, eg- oceans 11

Yes       No     Haven't seen these films

- This question gave us an insight as to what our audience perceived to be a thriller

9)How often do you watch a thriller?

Every Day   Weekly    Monthly    Annually    Other

- This question allowed us to find out how often our audience watched thrillers, this helped us to determine how accurate or trustworthy our results were, (eg- somebody who watches thrillers every day may have more knowledge based answers than somebody who doesn't watch them)

10)Would you watch thrillers if there was a wider variety?

Yes       No     Maybe

- This question allowed us to find out if we needed to add variety to our thriller or stick to conventional plots

We collated our results and drew graphs from the answers:

Overall from our results we found that the audience preferred the comedy genre with thriller rated second best. Their favourite part of a thriller is the feeling of suspense and they prefer thrillers that involve mind games. The majority of our audience had seen 15+ thrillers and would like to see both types of lighting included in a thriller. A high number of those questions did not consider the ocean films as thrillers and almost all of the audience would like more variety in thrillers.