Audience Research

To help me gain some further information about my audience I've decided to send out a questionnaire to a number of people. I've done this as I want to know if people I think are my target audience would actually be interested in a comedic short film or if they even enjoy the film technique. Also, I included a number of other questions that I believe will benefit me for both the making of the short film and the ancillary tasks surrounding it. I thought this would be useful as I'll be able to apply what I've learnt early on in my production to important posts that'll be done later in my project. I've screenshotted each individual question as I think it'll be useful to talk about each separately so I can get the most use out of it, each screenshot contains the question, a pie chart showing my results and a key that tells me what each colour represents on the pie chart. I managed to get 17 responses at the time of this post but certain questions have incorrect results, I'll mention which ones when I come to them.

I thought this was an important question to ask as it meant I could see what demographics I should aim to please since I could find out which BBFC ratings would be available to me and my short film. As you can see the majority segment is 15-17 year olds, this meant that Joshua and I were then adamant on achieving the 15 certificate or lower as it meant the main group of people that would be wanting to watch this short would be able to do so.

I decided to ask this question as it meant that I could see what gender would mainly be seeing the film because using stereotypes I'd be able to adapt certain aspects of my short film to cater to their desires of what they'd want to see, such as action. However, as I didn't reach out to a large number of people to take my survey it's clear to me that realistically the percentages would likely be more around the 3:2 area for the ratio of men to women that would be watching this type of movie. This means that if I were producing this film again, on a larger scale I would likely try and change my film to please both genders more.

This question was only asked as I'm making a short film and the results of this question aren't going to effect that whatsoever as I'm not planning on changing my task. However, it was interesting to see that over a quarter of young people do in fact watch them and after this questionnaire I went on to ask the people that marked yes what sort of short film they did watch and the two main answers were "Comedy or Fan Made" so this fills me will confidence that even though Joshua and I are making a niche product there's still a lot of interest in it.

This answer is of no use when applying it to my production as it doesn't affect how my short film will be made or how many people would watch it if the product were to be produced on a professional level. After some thought if I were to redo this questionnaire I don't believe I would include this question again as there's no practical use of me knowing that a certain percentage of my target audience watch 1, 2 etc short films a month.

Although this was a basic question I believe it was important to ask my potential target audience as it allows me to confirm my beliefs that comedy is a popular genre with teens. It also allowed me to prove to my partner in production: Joshua Coombe that comedy would be the best genre to choose to produce as our piece as at one point in the early stages of production we were considering horror as the genre in which we'd made our short film.

This question upon reflection wasn't very useful to ask my target research group as it doesn't particularly help me gain any information that would benefit the production of mine and Joshua's short film. Although it was interesting to see that everyone decided to answer the questionnaire fully when it was a multiple choice question rather than a question where they had to type and actually think about their answer so in future I will try to keep the questions in this format to avoid people skipping questions, like they do later on.

This question had the largest array of answers with seven of the possible eight options being shown to have been picked at least once by the 17 questionnaire takers without no one picking "Other". This meant the answers were more like a realistic survey at it showed the range of options a larger group would likely also produce as people have very different ideas of what can be funny to them. As you can see "Action", "Dark/Black" and "Spoof/Parody" comedies have all ranked above "Teen" which was a little concerning as teen comedy is the main idea we have for a short film. However, this didn't worry us as after much thought we established that doing an action comedy would be too hard to produce and a dark/black comedy would likely mean Joshua and I would have to accept our short having an 18 rating so we quickly ruled them out as possibilities. We then thought that the only sub-genre to beat our preferred choice of teen was spoof/parody but as there was only a small percentage difference we decided that we could remain doing a teen comedy as it'd only be one person a most that would slightly prefer the other option and for timing and easiness of writing/filming Joshua and I were willing to risk the loss of that potential costumer.

The results for this question were basically the same as the previous as most people picked similar sub-genres that meant besides one or two sub-genres there we just common areas in which the group as a whole were neutral about the particular sub-genre, such as: "Thriller", "Teen", "Animated" and "Spoof/Parody". However, much like action was the clear favourite sub-genre, romantic seems to be the clear least favourite. This is likely as the majority of the people filling out the questionnaire happened to be male so they want more male oriented humour rather than relationship based humour. This result assured me that we shouldn't include a romantic sub plot between two characters but it hasn't deterred me from including a plot line that one friend has been texting another of the friends' girlfriend as this could be a good way to cause tension and possible lead to an action or fight scene between them which would hopefully please the male audience.

This question didn't receive the correct number of answers but, in this case it wasn't as important as some of the other questions. This is because although I would have preferred this question to be filled out fully by everyone, it was only to get an understanding of what types of comedy movies my target audience already love. I chose to ask this question as a way of seeing if there were any commonalities so I could watch them and see what comedic elements I'd be able to apply to my short. As you can see the films that appeared more than once were: Anchorman, Central Intelligence, Hot Fuzz, 21 Jump Street, The Hangover & The Inbetweeners, I'm now going to break down each movie within a Prezi to show what I found useful about watching each of these movies and how they can affect my short films production.

As you can see between the six movies I watched and briefly analysed I gained a better understanding of what aspects I could incorporate into my short film. These were mainly the idea to create a montage of quickly cut shots matched to a piece of music, to have a close group of friends being portrayed and to include a comedic fight scene perhaps. Overall, I am very happy with how this singular question allowed me to get a better understanding of what my target audience want to see.

I asked "What Are Your Favourite Aspects Of A Comedy Movie?" because I thought it would allow me to get an understanding to what I should primarily focus on when writing my short film. This is because if people picked soundtracks as the most popular I would have included a lot of modern/classic songs in my film in order to please the audience for example but, as characters were the most voted option I knew that I should focus on casting actors with the ability to be funny when delivering a line, reacting to another character or being able to steal a scene with what they're doing, maybe through body language. I also noticed that dialogue and settings were important to my target audience so that gave me a clear indication that the script needed to have witty back and forth conversations between characters to keep the audience happy whilst picking a believable/relatable setting, in this case a school, so that the audience can better understand the characters feelings and thoughts without losing interest.

This was quite an important question for me to ask as it basically decided what types of movie I'd be making. This is because if my questionnaire came back with results wanting adults or children to be the stars more than teenagers I'd have to completely edit my short film idea. However, this wasn't the case which assured me and Joshua that we were on the right track to make an acceptable short for our target audience. Interestingly, the results weren't as definitive as I thought they'd be though as I had assumed that teenagers were going to be the clear decision but, with a 76.5% it showed that a 1/4 of people would want something else meaning that if I was to produce this movie on a studio level I'd already be losing potential costumers which fascinated me.

This question was my way of establishing what two ancillary tasks I should pick to go alongside my main piece. After looking at the possible choices and looking back at the results of this poll I have decided to choose to produce a poster and magazine review. This is because I am unable to create a video so that means I can't to either the YouTube Video or Trailer option.

This question focused on what I should include within my poster. This was an important question as it decided what aspects I should make the main focus and if I were to pick the wrong option it could mean that I could lose my potential audience simply because of bad marketing. The overall consensus was that it needs to include the characters of the movie with the possible inclusion of a scene from the film or a random image that would allow for mystery about what the film is about to occur. However, I had already determined that this would be the main answer so this question didn't leave me surprised but it was nice to gain reassurance about my decision.

As I have picked to produce a magazine article review of my own short film as an ancillary task I thought it would be important to see how many of my target audience members would actually use it as a source of gaining knowledge about my film if it were a real life movie. The fact that only 23.5% said they would meant I was less stressed about producing a phenomenal piece as it typically wouldn't receive as much attention which allowed me to proceed with my production with ease rather than panic as I wasn't worrying about tackling it until near the end of the project.

This follow up question was to simply see what method of obtaining reviews my target audience use. As you can see only four people answered this and considering only 23.5% answered yes to the previous question this seems to be the appropriate amount of responses. It also shows that the main way people between the ages of 15-17 read/listen to reviews is through YouTube which wasn't too surprising to me as this age demographic has been brought alongside the growth of the internet so for YouTube to be three quarters of the answers isn't shocking when digital media outlets are quickly overtaking physical copies of media resources such as magazines or newspapers.

Overall, the experience and knowledge I have gained about what I should include in my short films and ancillaries through this questionnaire is a lot as it has given me a clear idea of what my target audience want to see in my production. This is mainly the fact they want a comedy short that features some action amongst a group of teenage friends. This conclusion has been drawn from me applying all my answers to a real life context, in this case what my short film is so this questionnaire has helped me see that what I'm already doing is a good idea if I want to be successful in achieving what my audience want to see in a comedy short. If I were to do this questionnaire I certainly believe I would leave out certain questions such as "How Often Do You Watch Short Films?" and instead I would add questions that upon reflection would likely have helped my production more such as, how many characters do you think there should be in my short or what should the ratio of male to female characters should there be. This is because I could have used this information to adapt my script/storyboards further so I can better please the audience that would be watching my short. I would also try to reach a larger demographic of people by posting my questionnaire on more online locations so that I can get a larger array of data rather than reaching out to similar minded people, in this case 15-17 year old males. If anything I would have appreciated a larger number of females taking my questionnaire and perhaps people of an older age as they'd both bring new perspectives as they've watched different comedies and would ultimately have different options to younger males.