Target Audience – Results Analysis

For my target audience research I produced an online survey that was completed by 14 people. I asked ten questions to help me understand what my target audience, of 16-30 year olds, wanted from a thriller genre opening.

My survey was taken by 53% boys and 47% girls and I found that 77% of these people in fact enjoy the thriller genre. Also the participant’s results say that 38% watch it ‘Fairly Often’, 38% watch it ‘Not Very Often’ and 23% watch it ‘Often’.  From these results I can tell that predominantly the people who took the survey do in fact enjoy and watch the genre I am creating a project on. Therefore the results we get I can find more reliable.  

In the first open question ‘What do you expect from the Opening of a Thriller genre?’ the results were very informative. For example one person answered they’d like ‘Something to grab their attention e.g action’ and someone else said ‘Excitement to engage them’. This tells me that the younger adult audience like to be excited and thrilled to keep them engaged from the very start. This is significant to my end production because I can film according to what the audience want to see. As they want a more exciting beginning and a beginning that keeps them engaged I will create a product that fulfils these desires. Possibly a piece that leaves unanswered questions that can only be answered later on in the text. This also is what an opening of a film is expected to do, excite and engage the audience so they continue to watch.

The results state that the audience want there to be some link to context of the plot in the first 1-2 minutes of the opening sequence. However some wish there to be ‘Not Much’ context of the plot as possibly this may ruin the film for later on as it needs to be a gradual introduction. Also my results show that 46% of participants say they do not mind if the text conforms or challenges to the general stereotypes of the Thriller genre. Therefore this leaves it open to me to decide which way I want to the opening sequence to go. This is important to know also so I do not produce something my target audience would not enjoy.

Another question was how they would like the text to flow, for example a continuous shot or frequent cuts. The answers stated that more people would prefer there to be fewer cuts, to ‘allow the story to develop’ and so they can ‘get their head around the story’. This informs me for my editing that I do not want to chop up the filming I do, also it helps me with filming as now I will film more continuous and longer shots. Also now I know not to jump from one scene to the next, especially in the opening sequence the audience seem to want to be eased into the scene and new setting.

The final two questions where linking to the sound of the text. For example a result shows that 54% of participants would want there to be a specific score made for the film. Meaning that I will find a specific score for my text and not copy a well-known song or score.  Also the results say that 69% of participants prefer there to be more dialogue then voice overs. However 31% state they’d prefer voice overs. Therefore I could use both of the two to appeal to all of the audiences however I’d focus on more dialogue to appeal to the most common results.