Audience Research.. Questionnaire Results

We was able to get a good amount of answers by sharing a link to a social network. To be able to analyse the results we made graphs and collected up the data found for each answer.

Which category below includes your age?

The majority of people that filled it in was 17 or younger, as out of there was 16 out of 24. This means that the results we get for the rest of our questionnaire will be mainly from teenagers which are mainly 14 till 17. Therefore whatever results we get we will have to suit are target audience accordingly.

How would you describe a typical thriller film?

Nearly fifty percent of people that answered this question chose tense, then with less than twenty percent each mysterious and exciting were the next two to be chose. No one thought thrillers could be described as fun, however a couple did describe them to be dark, scary or dramatic. The results from this clearly show that thrillers are described as being tense and mysterious and exciting by the people who answered this questionnaire.

What factors would make you watch a thriller?

In order to find out what actually makes people watch thrillers we asked about factors that make you watch a thriller and found that it was clear that an appealing storyline is a major necessity. This was followed  by the cast and reputation as these could be seen as important factors too however it was clear that 85% of people that answered the question agreed with an appealing storyline. Only one person answered  with good reviews.

What makes a good thriller opening for you?

• It makes you jump
• Makes you want to carry on watching, keeps you asking questions
• When they describe the background to what the story is about for example the opening to Knowing (Nicholas Cage), or if there is no background to show then something mysterious that's explained later on in the film.
• Dramatic Secretive - not giving the whole story away
• A confusing yet captivating scene that makes you want to know more. Blood's always pretty good.
• A setting that's original, but keeps you on the edge of your seat.
• Dark and jump scenes.
• Quiet, slow with an underlying hint of immediate threat.
• Something that straight away you can just tell is going to be thrilling.
• Getting straight into the plot, where the central characters are introduced and the objects/items/people that go on to jeopardize their fate emerge.
• It should start with a hint of action so that the audience is engaged straight away.
• When you have the ending scene played to you at the beginning, to make you guess what happens in between.
• Has to show the main characteristics of the antagonist, without giving away too much, good music can really help to set the scene, and include suspense/tension/mystery. Need to be instantly grabbed.
• Realistic
• Quite dark and gloomy, and full of suspense and cliff hangers.
• Full of tension and suspense, and doesn't give a lot away obviously but slips in clues and suspicious hints during it with good effective music.

What is your favourite thriller out of the following?

In order to see what type of thrillers appeal to the market, we asked for the person filling out the questionnaire to select one from the following list. It was clear that the most well known and recent films came out top, as Black Swan and Inception both had around thirty percent each. 

What made that particular film enjoyable?

Black Swan

• How unique it was.
• Good storyline.
• The female lead.
• The lead role was pretty, I could associate with it. Simple plot, with bold events.
• I've only seen three of the six and black swan scared the hell out of me.. so jumpy.
• The dark images, beautiful music, beautiful women, and the way the director played with the viewer's mind.

Inception 

• How everything was happening in fairly normal houses and buildings yet everything was so unusual.
• The storyline and special effects.
• It makes you think and has an interesting underlying plot.
• It took a complicated idea and presented it in a way that was quite clear and easy to understand.

The Sixth Sense

• Good storyline.
• The fact that it was scary but not too terrifying, and it was a really gripping storyline especially when they revealed that he was a ghost at the end which I was not expecting, in a good way.
• Bruce Willis... is a ghost!

The Dark Knight

• Incredible soundtrack, keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, comes to a satisfying conclusion and explored interesting character of Batman being a hero but with deep flaws.

Se7en

• Good actors and good storyline.

The Departed

• Twists, suspense, action, excitement, good actors/acting.

From all of these results that we received in the questionnaire it was clear that from analysising and summarising the answers given we would be able to make an audience profile, which we could also use as our target audience criteria.