Audience Research Methods

What are audience research methods?

Audience research methods are ways in which someone like myself can gain an a better insight into what people may like, dislike or prefer in films, television programmes and in our case the opening to a thriller film.

Audience research methods include, interviews, questionnaires, logs of films, observations of discussions, online questionnaires, focus groups and data collection.

Each method has both benefits and drawbacks for example questionnaires are quick, easy to set up and mostly contain the information the creator is looking for as you can tailor questions to suit any specific queries or needs, however questionnaires may carry weak and even possibly inaccurate information as people maybe reduced to a limited choice of possible answers.

Having said all this I personally believe that our group should use both interviews and focus groups for our audience research methods, I believe these methods will certainly help our group as they will provide us with detailed and accurate information as well as being able to get a better insight into what people enjoy, dislike and what they may want to see included in a possible opening to a thriller film. Yes these options are time consuming but if we find the time to execute the methods appropriately then we could gain extremely valuable information that will help our group progress and with the right analysis create an opening no-one can afford to miss!

There are a variety of different ways in which we could approach these methods but I believe that if we ask the right questions and take down all the key and relevant information needed then we will be on to a winner. For example if we tailor our questions correctly to address any specific issues we have to do with any idea's or plans within the group, the results and feedback from these questions could prove essential as they could help to rule out or enhance any possible idea's. We could setup interviews and focus groups at school during lunchtimes, study periods or even media lessons as well as outside of school at places such as local cinemas, with a fixed amount of specific questions.

This was a reasonably simple decision to make as I had filled in a table (below) outlining both benefits and drawbacks of each individual audience research method. It was clear from this table that interviews and focus groups would be the most beneficial to us and would provide us with what i believe the best and most accurate information possible.

Table Outlining Benefits and Drawbacks of Audience Research Methods

So in conclusion to all this as previously stated I personally believe that we should use both interviews and focus groups as our audience research methods.