Audience Research: Questionaire

For my thriller research I conducted a questionnaire on thirty people I knew who watch a fair amount of thriller movies. These results helped us make certain decisions for out thriller opening.

1. What Gender Are You?

-Male (15)

-Female (15)

I purposefully asked the same amount of people of each genre, to make it a fairer questionnaire. By doing this we can make the thriller appeal equally appealing to to both genders.

2. How Old Are You?

-Child (12-) (3)

-Teenager (13+) (8)

-Adult (19+) (7)

-Middle Aged (36+) (8)

-Elderly (50+) (4)

This shows that not many children tend to watch thrillers, and neither for more elderly people. This means we can make our thriller quite maturely and we don't really have any restrictions on aspects such as violence.

3.What's Your Most Preferred Genre Of Thriller?

-Crime (5)

-Conspiracy (3)

-Disaster (5)

-Government (3)

-Mysterious (10)

-Psychological (4)

By these results, I now know that we can make our thriller a mysterious thriller, which means we can now start to storyboard the movie, knowing what we are making.

4. Do You Prefer A Male Or Female Villain?

-Male (18)

-Female (12)

This strongly pushes us into choosing a male actor for the villain, this a convention of most thrillers, as men stereotypically tend to appear more powerful and threatening than women.

5. Do You Prefer A Male Or Female Victim?

-Male (16)

-Female (14)

These results are pretty equal, so theoretically we could use a male or a female, but it's more convenient for us to use a male, as one of our group can be in it that way. Also, our rough plot so far is set around two 'friends', so a two males would be more believable.

6. What Kind Of Music Would You Prefer In A Thriller Opening

-Fast Paced (13)

-Slow Build Up (12)

-Other (5)

Most thrillers tend to have fast paced music at fast parts of the movie, to keep the pace up. However as this only the opening sequence of a thriller, and judging by this survey, we could possibly use a slow epic of music in our opening, that builds up, and then maybe becomes faster.

7.Do You Prefer Black And White Or Colour Thrillers?

-Colour (14)

-Black and White (16)

These results convey that the majority of people prefer thrillers that are in black and white, however, this just may the people i asked, and the results are close, so we decided we might have different parts in black and white and colour, to please the majority of the audience, and to make our opening a bit stylish.

8. Would You Prefer A Small Or Big Chunk Of Dialogue In An Opening Sequence?

-Small (11)

-Big (19)

Due to these results we are going to include a minimal amount of speech, also thrillers tend to have fast paced openings to get the audience sucked in, we don't want to bore our audience with lots of dialogue.

9. What Kind Of Weapon Do You Think Would Suit A Thriller Opening Best?

-Gun (13)

-Knife (7)

-Baseball Bat (6)

-Other (4)

This helped us choose a weapon, as a gun would clearly please the audience more, and would be a lot more simple to include and less gory, so easier to film.

10. Do You Think Smart Or Casual Clothing Suits A Thriller Better?

-Smart (7)

-Casual (23)

This makes sense in relation to the question on different thriller genres, suits or smarter clothing tend to suit government or conspiracy thrillers better than mysterious or psychological thrillers.

11. What Sort Of location Do You Think A Thriller Should Open In?

-Gothic (12)

-Average, Everyday (18)

This makes our thriller a lot easier to shoot, and is also a convention of most thrillers to be set in everyday locations, so when something abnormal happens, it appears to be more out of the ordinary.