Target Audience and Data Research

To work out what type of audience would be interested in our opening sequence we made a survey that can be filled out online: through our website or using a link. We asked our family and friends to fill out our survey making sure that we asked a wide range of people so that our sample is not biased towards one gender or age group. We asked general questions about what type of films they enjoy and what aspects of films they think should be included in a thriller and a comedy. 

We then analysed the results to give us a good idea of what type of audience our opening sequence will appeal to:

The majority of people that filled in our survey were female therefore it may be slightly biased towards a female audiences views. 23% of those that filled in our survey were male and 77% were female. 

Again our results show that 88.4% who filled in our survey were aged 16-18 years old so it may be biased towards 'teen' views. It was difficult to get a wide range of ages as the majority of people that filled in our survey go to sixth form with us therefore are all 16-18 years old. However we managed to get some older and younger views by asking our parents and younger siblings. 

We found that 45% said that comedy films are their favourite type of movie, romance and horror being the next on 18%. This was useful for us to know as we are planning on creating a comedy/thriller opening sequence therefore we are pleased that comedy is the most popular genre. 

We found that comedy/romance films are the most popular by 54%  with the other two at 23% , however we are adamant that we will work with the thriller genre as it is the best genre to show off editing and filming techniques, it is also the most enjoyable to film.  

Our survey told us that 82& of people that filled it out enjoy climax and anticlimaxes in thriller films, followed by jump scares at 68%. This will help us when planning our filming and writing our script as we now know what techniques to include to satisfy the audience. 

We then asked a similar question on comedy aspects, we found that 95% enjoy sarcasm in comedy films and 55% also enjoy hysterical laughter. We will therefore consider including these aspects in our opening sequence, especially sarcasm as it was the most popular comedy aspect. 

Our last question told us that 36% thought that a thriller film is best set in a mental asylum, and 36% also thought a family home scenario would suit it well. As filming in a mental asylum would be very difficult a family home scenario looks like our best location option as we all are able to use our own houses for this.

This survey has really helped us to gather ideas for location and given us ideas on filming/editing aspects to include in our opening sequence. We think our opening sequence should be aimed at two of the four quadrants: under 25 males and under 25 females. This is because we got our ideas and opinions from a mainly young/'teen' audience therefore we know their preferences well. Also we are of a similar age to these two categories so we can produce an opening sequence that we are interested in and hopefully our interests and opinions will be similar to our target audiences.