Extra Research on Genre and Audience

For this task, I am going to do my own independent research on genre and audience to get some primary information. I have decided to do a questionnaire about what genres people like, and what they expect to see in a film of that genre. I am hoping this will help give me an idea of what genre to choose as I will see what people like about them and therefore I will see what I could possibly include in my film opening.

 

Questionnaire

I created the questionnaire online using survey monkey. I wanted to find out what sort of content people like to see from certain genres so I have an idea of what they would expect to see in my film opening. I made 5 questions which were; what is your favourite film genre, what do you believe an action film has to have in order for you to like it, the same question but with comedy and thriller, and what do you believe any film has to have to be successful. I chose to look at comedy, action and thriller as these are my top three choices of genre for my film opening. I asked a maximum of 18 people to complete my survey in which most of them are aged around 15-17 and a few are older. Also most of them were female. The questions were multiple choice and the participants were allowed to tick more than one box when answering.

Results

Question 1

For this question, the most popular answer was comedy which I believe is because this genre has made the most films and a lot of people generally enjoy comedy films as comedy can be interpreted into almost any film no matter what genre it actually is. The least popular answers were musical, war, western and documentary. I expected this outcome as there aren't as many films based off of these genres and they aim for more niche audiences because of how they aren't very popular. In my opinion there are a few films that I like that are of them genres e.g. western films I like are Rango, A million ways to die in the west and Back to the future 3. However there isn't enough for me to say I like that genre because there are many western films I don't particularly like. I was surprised that adventure only got two votes as in my secondary research, I found out that it had made the top total box office out of them all. This has helped me decide to use comedy in some way for my film opening because its a genre that most people enjoy.

Question 2

For this question, the most popular answer was 'a realistic situation' which is interesting to find out because many action films like superhero movies don't contain realistic situations. This may be that the participants prefer to watch a film with a realistic situation because they could imagine it actually happening in real life. For example people would prefer to watch something like the film 'San Andreas' or 'Non-stop' because its a realistic action film and similar events have actually happened. I think people like this concept because it allows us to learn about the world and learn what its like to be in these sort of situations. The least popular option was 'cars' with no votes at all which is understandable as you don't need cars in an action film to make it good, but it depends what sort of film your making because for example 'fast and furious 7' is all about cars. What's interesting though is that 7 people said that they would expect to see some sort of chase in an action film which would probably involve cars. Finding this information out has helped me a lot by giving me an idea of what aspects of action films people expect to see or would like to see so I now have an idea of what I could include in my film opening.

 

Question 3

The most popular option for this question was 'characters with a sense of humour' in which all except 2 people chose. I expected this to be a popular choice because it is necessary that a comedy film will contain a character with a sense of humour otherwise it won't be much of a comedy. The least popular answers were people hurting themselves, an exaggerated storyline, and children.  I collected these ideas from films for example Deadpool, he is always injuring himself and its a comedy film. One of my ideas was to have a child as the villain in my film opening, but for the option of children' that only had one vote. However I didn't specify clearly what I meant so people may have thought children in adult humour (e.g. Bad Grandpa) or something like me idea. This has helped because I now know what options aren't very necessary to look at so I am less likely to use them in my film opening if I do comedy.

 

Question 4

 For this question, the option for 'tension' was by far the highest answer as everyone but three people chose this. I expected this because thriller is all about thrilling the audience - causing a reaction to what they are watching by surprising them, causing emotion, or scaring them. To jump scare an audience, the best way to do this is to build up tension which every thriller film that I know of does. If i were to do this genre I will definitely involve tension in some way as I think this is a good way to draw in an audience and this is what most people would expect to see in a thriller. Everyone chose each of the options and there are quite a few that have only 1 choice which are 'investigations', 'a natural disaster', a hero or villain, and 'view the story from a characters perspective'. This has helped me for my research as I now know that these are not so relevant to include in my film opening so it isn't important to include them. I also now know that I must definitely include tension if I go along with this genre. 

 

Question 5

I asked this question to get a general idea of what people expect of successful films which actually the results surprised me. The most popular option was 'A list actors' (class) with 8 votes which surprised me as I didn't think people would be less interested in a film just because of the actors in it. I have watched may films who I hadn't known the actors and in order to learn or find out who the actors are, you are introduced to them in the first film you watch of them, so this left me a bit confused. However I do see how people can be drawn to a film just because of the actors in it, and it can make a huge impact on how big the film becomes and how many people want to watch it. Obviously, we won't be having well-known actors in our film opening, however it was interesting to find out for my research as it's useful to know what others expect. May of the options on this question weren't chosen by anyone so I know that many of these aren't necessary to include for my film opening. It was good to find out that 2 people chose the option of 'well known locations' so now I know that I should consider maybe filming in London as that was one of my ideas and it is a location that is well known by the whole world.

 

Conclusion

By doing this questionnaire, I have found out so much of what ideas and what aspects people prefer so I know what people expect to see from my film opening and what people want to see. Also these are reliable results as they come from a primary source. This has helped me a lot with narrowing down what ideas are best and have also helped me to analyse each genre and to decide what genre to choose. Also this has helped me find out about what sort of audiences like my ideas so I know what route to go down depending on who I am targeting my film at. To improve my results I could have asked more people who were different ages and more males as I mostly asked females, so I would have a bigger range of different people answering my questions. However I collected good reliable results which I have a lot from.