2. OVERVIEW
This information we will obtain will be very beneficial, as we will gain an understanding of
our audience a lot more. This will help us so that we can work out how to make them aware
of our film and make it suit them and keep them interested. Therefore, we decided to
create a questionnaire that we would give to various people to fill in to just understand their
personal interests. Many of our questions were specifically designed to get certain/specific
information form the questions. An example of this: Our question where we asked, “what
supermarket do you shop in?” This question would specifically help us to understand what
social group can relate more to the narrative within our film. The overall purposes of this
questionnaire are to help us to fulfill our audience’s wants, and overall satisfy their
expectations of a thriller film
3. QUESTION ONE- “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”
The responses for our survey were predominantly from
people within the age group 14-18. Out of the sixty-
eight responses we got 72% (49 People) where in this
age group compared to only 8%(6 people) in the age
group 45+ and even less for the age group 24-45. From
this survey we have more of an idea about what
people between the ages of 14-18 like in regard to a
thriller films. We as a group have decided to aim our
thriller at this target audience. We have the most
information on them, and they are more influential
with thriller conventions due to modern lifestyle. The
survey may have been biased because all three of us
are students and most of the people that answered
our questionnaires were our friends or fellow students
therefore we didn’t have a range of responses. The
results weren’t balanced so we didn’t get and hugely
good understanding of what different age groups
prefer hence we are aiming our thriller at teens.
4. QUESTION TWO- “HOW DO YOU
IDENTIFY YOURSELF?”
The second question that we asked was
“How do you identify yourself?” and for this
question the response we got was
unbalanced Males: 22 people (33%) and
females 46(67%). We didn’t ask exactly the
same amount of people within each
gender. This therefore didn’t give us a
balanced view and doesn’t particularly help
us to understand the difference between
male and female interpretations of the
thriller genre. We have a better
understanding of what females like
compared to males. If we were to carry out
the questionnaire again we would try to get
the questionnaire out to an equal number of
people. From our results we could actually
use Mulvey's theory of Male gaze this could
make the film easy to relate to but will also
attract a male audience towards the thriller.
5. QUESTION THREE- “WHAT TYPE OF
WORK ARE YOU IN?”
The third question we asked was ‘what type of
work are you in?’ and most of the people that
we asked where in full time education- a
student, 39/68 responses (58%) The next most
popular type of work for people we asked
was for part time would and presumably this
would include students with part time jobs
(20%) followed by full time, then unemployed
and then retired. This starts to give us an idea
about people’s social class. I think this links
well to question five about how many times
per month somebody goes to the cinema. It
gives us an idea of the type of income and
how much disposable income people have
spare to spend on leisure activities such as
going to the cinema. It also gives us an idea
of how much spare time people have to visit
the cinema. The results are again unbalanced
because most of the people we asked were
roughly our age however in this case i don't
think it is as important, there is no direct
correlation.
6. QUESTION FOUR- “WHAT
SUPERMARKET DO YOU SHOP IN?”
The fourth question we asked for our survey was
”Which supermarket do you shop in?” As
expected the most common supermarket that
people shop at is Tesco’s (46%) followed by the
other three supermarkets in the “Big Four.” From
these results the people who have answered
our survey fell into the category of ‘Mainstream’
under Young and Rubicam’s 4 C’s model.
These are people who live in the world of the
domestic and the everyday with routine and
order. They are the largest out of the categories
in the young and rubicam theory. In order to
make it more relatable to them we should use
and ‘everyman’ character so the audience of
out thriller could relate to the character and
imagine them in the character's position
7. QUESTION FIVE-”HOW FREQUENTLY DO
YOU VISIT THE CINEMA IN A MONTH?”
From the results that we obtained most of
the people we asked visited the cinema
once a month. This clearly shows that the
people we have asked are already
relatively into seeing new films.
This also means that the people we asked
have enough money to spend on leisure
activities such as going to the cinema. This is
good for us to know because we already
know that most of the people we have
surveyed are students and this is our target
audience. Five people that we asked
skipped this question, i would presume that
it is because their was no option to select
less than once a month. However it is not
that important because the number is so
low.
8. QUESTION SIX: WHAT IS YOUR
FAVOURITE THRILLER SUB-GENRE?
From our results we can see that the most
popular response was crime thriller
however not by a huge amount. Sixteen
people said that their favourite sub-genre
is crime thrillers , followed next by horror
thrillers (eleven people) and then
psychological thrillers(10 people). From our
results the 4th most popular sub-genre is
comedy which was unexpected for us
therefore we want to incorporate an
element of comedy in the film. These
responses are particularly helpful in
planning for our thriller film because it
gives us the best understanding of what
the target audience likes our of the eleven
options given. For our thriller we have
decided to make a crime/psychological
thriller because they go well togethers
however we are going to add an element
of comedy to our thriller.
9. QUESTION SEVEN: WHAT DO YOU THINK
MAKES A THRILLER FILM A THRILLER?
For this question we allowed people to chose
more than one option so we got a broader
range, no good thriller only includes one of
these element. The most popular response to
this question was an element of surprise and
62.24% of people said so. Closely followed by
this the next most popular response with 40
people saying ‘edge of your seat’. These two
things were a considerable amount higher
than any of the other responses meaning that
we should mainly focus on making these two
elements brilliant. The thriller needs to be
gripping and keep people engaged but
should also shock/surprise the audience. it
needs to be unpredictable. The next most
popular element was tense music with 22
responses, this again helps us to understand
that the music needs to be interesting and
eeries too. This question will be one of the most
helpful in creating a good thriller opening
sequence.
10. QUESTION EIGHT: DO YOU ENJOY GOING
TO THE CINEMA?
Every person who answered this
question except from one person
answered ‘yes’. This means that the
people we asked are interested in films
and. We had a wide range of age
groups answer this question so this
shows almost everyone enjoys
watching films in the cinema. This shows
that we can widen the age range of
our thriller as we can be sure that it will
appeal to all. This question also tells us
that people must be relatively wealthy
if they have enough disposable income
to spend money at the cinema. 98.53%
of people answered yes to this
question. This is good for us because
almost 100% of people enjoy going to
the cinema.
11. QUESTION NINE: IF YES, WHAT DO YOU
ENJOY ABOUT GOING TO THE CINEMA?
Again for this question we gave the
people we surveyed more than one
option. In response to this question The
most common answer was ‘seeing new
films’ which is useful information because
we are creating a new opening scene
for a film that no one will have seen and
we can make it different to all existing
thrillers. The least common answer is
‘romantic element’ which is good as we
have decided we will not have any
romantic elements in our film opening
scene. The second most popular thing
that people like about going to the
cinema is seeing a film in better picture
and sound quality. We won't be able to
do a huge amount in regard to sound
and picture quality but we should aim to
make the quality of our filming to the best
of our ability.
12. QUESTION TEN- DO YOU ENJOY
WATCHING THRILLER FILMS?
For this question we asked people if they
enjoyed watching thriller films. For this
question again we got 68 responses and
59(86%) of people said yes, they do like
watching thrillers. This is a positive for us
because we are creating a thriller and it is
reassuring to know that a high percentage
of people enjoy watching thrillers
compared to the minority whom do enjoy
thrillers. Looking at this question now it is
relatively irrelevant, we have to create a
thriller so it doesn't really matter if people
don't enjoy watching a thriller film or not. If
most of the responses were ‘no’ what we
could have done was make the thriller
completely unique and unconventional
however we don't need to do so as most
people said they do like thrillers.
