section 4: Audience research - and research into BBFC film classification system

Audience Research

For our audience research, we made a questionnaire with twenty questions about different things that our target audience prefers in a thriller.

Question 1
To answer our questionnaire we asked 40 people, 17 males and 23 females. This gave us a decent sized sample and was split pretty equally so that the results were fine to generalise.

Question 2:

In the people that we asked, 23 people were 18 years old, 16 people were 15 years old and 1 person was 40 years old. This meant that the majority of our sample was in the intended/target audience

Question 3:

When we asked what sex the killer should be, 31 people said male, 6 said a female and 3 said either. This made us decide that our main character will definitely be male.

Question 4:

We asked whether a plot twist was preferable in a thriller and 38 people said yes with only two people saying that it was too cliche. We took this into consideration when discussing the plot.

Question 5:

When asked whether they liked a romance, 16 people said they did, but 24 people said that they didn't. Because of this split result we may have a small romance within the film but not let it distract from the main plot.

Question 6 :

We asked the audience whether they would prefer an anonymous killer and 33 people said yes whereas 7 people said no.

Question 7:

We asked whether out target audience preferred a gory thriller or a psychological one. 21 people preferred a psychological one, 9 gory, and 10 for both. This will be taken into consideration with the plot

Question 8:

We asked what point of view the film should be in. 23 said the killers point of view, 10 said the detective, 10 said both and 1 person said the victims. Therefore, our thriller is going to be in the murderers point of view.

Question 9:

When asked how many murders are better 11 people said just one, but 29 people said several so in our plot we are going to have more than one murder.

Question 10:

To decided whether to put a chase scene into our film, we asked our target audience would they like one. 16 people said yes, but 19 people said no. 5 people said it completely depended on the plot overall, so if we are going to see if a chase scene fits into our particular plot.

Question 11:

We asked our audience which film title they like the best and overall they preferred 'Antipyschotic' (22), then 'Prescription' (8), then '4AM' (7), and least 'The Scary Door' (1). Therefore we are going to name our thriller film 'Antipyschotics'.

Question 12:

We asked the audience what styles of music they would like and they came up with quite a few suggestions:
Eerie
Creepy
Dark
Tense
Exciting
Orchestral
Screamo
Scary
Fast-paced
Edgy
Screechy
Metal/Rock
Suspenseful
Dramatic
Classical
Techno
Repetitive
Spooky

We will take these into consideration when we are choosing the soundtrack for the opening of our thriller.

Question 13:

When asked what time of day the film should be set in, a huge majority (29) said night, 3 said day, 2 said both, and 2 said either. We have decided to film our opening at night.

Question 14:

We asked where the film should be set as question 14. 23 people said in a city and 17 people said in a village, therefore the setting of our thriller will be in a normal, everyday house in an urban, city setting.

Question 15:

We asked the participants what type of killer they would prefer and everyone but one person said that they would prefer a creepy, clever killer over a big, bulky one.

Question 16:

We asked the audience what plot sounded the best and overall (23) they picked our plot out as sounding the best. This means that we are going to continue to develop the plot we have discussed.

Question 17:

In the questionnaire we asked what would your method of killing be and they came up with a few answers:

Torture
Knifed/stabbing
Mutilation
Beheading/decapitation
Explosives
Massacre
Bleeding to death
Poison
Abuse
Blow torch
Chainsaw
Strangling
Shooting

Question 18:

When asked which is the best way to solve a murder, 12 people said seeing it happen, 25 said seeing the aftermath and piecing the clues together and 3 people said they like to see both. Therefore in our thriller we are not going to show the murders happening.

Question 19:

The majority of people asked (25) preferred age certificate 15 thrillers over age 15 certificate thrillers.This means that we are going to aim our thriller at a slightly younger audience than first imagined.

Question 20:

We asked whether our target audience preferred the murders to be slow or fast and 31 people said they preferred a slow murder, while 3 people said they preferred a quick murder and 6 people saying that it depends.

These were all of the questions that we included in our questionnaire.