2. PRIMARY RESEARCH: SURVEY
Aim: To gain an insight into how the public view short films and a potential TA.
Participants: 12 males and 20 females.5 from outside VUE cinema in Leicester square,
10 film students, 10 people outside of VUE cinema in Harrow and 7 family and friends.
Methodology: Ask people coming out of the cinemas in Leicester square at the time of
the London film festival to fill in the survey. The same was done at the cinema in Harrow,
but there was no festival going on in that area. Getting students who study film and media
studies to fill out the survey. Having my friends and family fill out the survey also.
Findings: 23 people were aged between 15 - 25, which took over the majority of the
participants while the other age groups didn't have that many participants.
3. QUESTION 1
I used this as the first question on the survey in order to understand just how many
males and females answered the questions. This would then help me to understand
more about the gender I would use in my TA. I wanted an even number of both
males and females but a lot of the men wouldn't stop to answer questions.
4. QUESTION 2
This question was done to establish the type of age group my TA would fall under.
Due to me asking a lot of students the highest age range was 15 - 25 year olds. The
lowest age range was 35 - 45.
5. QUESTION 3
This is one of the most important questions and from the results I found that a lot of people do not
watch short films, this could be because of the majority of 15 -25 year olds I asked, as people in this
age group are more inclined to go and watch feature length films. Although there was a small
proportion of this group that had actually watched a short film.
6. QUESTION 4
For this question I already predicted what the outcome would be due to the results
of the previous question. As suspected 1- 2 was the highest value for the amount
of short films, my participants had seen, showing me that my participants were not
familiar with the codes and conventions of a short film.
7. QUESTION 5
In this question I was not surprised to see that Teen, romance and thriller were the popular genres. The
minorities of fantasy and action were a result of the small proportion of males and 35- 45 and 45+ age
groups. From this graph I am able to establish which genre my TA would enjoy watching the most. The
popularity of the teen and romantic drama genre’s are a result of my target audience mainly being
aged between 25-35 therefore many people in this age group are interested in those genre’s as a
mean to escape from their everyday life.
8. QUESTION 6
After gaining some information about short films in general. I wanted to get information on my
preferred genre of film which was a teen drama. I asked this question in order to get some
ideas on what they think actually happens, so I can think of scenarios to happen in my film.
The highest ranking scenarios were: relationships breaking up, bullying and teenage
pregnancy
9. QUESTION 7
This question is similar to the one prior but here I wanted to know what my audience would want in a
teen drama and not what actually happens already. The results changed slightly but not drastically
and a lot more people, would like teenage pregnancy to be the main focus and family issues
which increased a lot. I think bullying is a overused subject in teen drama and the public wants a
change, which its preference was so low.
10. QUESTION 8
This was the last of the closed questions and I wanted to find out what sorts of music my audience
would hear, in order to establish what sorts of music I should use in my film that will add to the
narrative and create tension. Dramatic and tension building was the highest with 28% and Upbeat
and lively coming in second with 22%, the next was slow and sad. From this I would use dramatic
and slow and sad, as the two styles juxtapose and can help to show changes in emotion in my film.
11. OPEN QUESTIONS
In addition to the closed questions, I also asked my participants a set of open
questions that aimed to gain more of an insight into the views my participants
held on certain issues that I was considering to have in my film.
The answers to these question’s helped me to understand what my audience
thought about issues such as Teenage pregnancy and I can then tailor these
views into my own film.
The key responses to the question’s are on the next slide.
13. CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions: There was a noticeable bias with the amount of people who watched short
films that were film and media studies students in comparison to the rest of the participants.
A lot of the participants from Leicester square were particularly drawn to comedy and
drama genres as opposed to the others, this could be because of the films that were
showing that day at the cinema. A large majority of the participants were teens and early
20's, this could be because mainly young people visit the cinemas nowadays and a lot of
them said that they would like a film that had teenagers as the main characters, due to this
I will base my target audience on teens by making my lead characters teens. After
analysing my findings I have decided to create a teen drama, with teens as the main focus.
I will focus my issues on family issues, relationships and teenage pregnancy focusing on
the negative aspects of these topics.
