Target audience questionnaire results - Miss Miller

To help us plan what we wanted to include in our thriller opening clip, we carried out a questionnaire, where we asked our target audience of around 15 years of age, various questions as to what they thought should be included in a thriller film. The questions we asked are below;

We decided to ask 40 people the questions on the questionnaire, the majority of those being from our target audience age range. We then thought the best way to present our findings would be by using pie charts as this is a clear way of showing the data we have collected.


This pie chart shows that the majority of people we asked were female, as only 30% were male. This could mean that our results are not as accurate or reliable as they could be, because females may have different ideas as to what they would expect to find in a thriller film, than males would do.






When asking 'What interests you to watch thrillers?', 50% said that they were recommended to watch the film by family and friends. This would work well for my group as we do not have the resources to make an advert or some posters and so 'word of mouth' would work best for us, when advertising our thriller opening.





When deciding on the age certificate for our clip, we were thinking that most thrillers are either a 15 or an 18 depending on the content. To help us decide which one to choose, we asked the question shown opposite. 60 % of people said they expect thrillers to have a 15 age rating, and because only 40% chose the 18 option, we decided our age certificate for our thriller was to be a 15.




When thinking about our thriller clip, we thought of all the conventions there are in thrillers, such as 'chase scenes', 'fight scenes' and 'blood' etc. However, we couldn't decide on which ones to use and so asked the question shown opposite. The results concluded that the 3 main conventions were 'Death' with 23% , a 'Killer & Victim' with 20% and 'Chase scenes' with 13%. We have therefore tried to focus and incorporate these conventions into our group narrative and then our clip. What I have concluded from the data collected in this pie chart is that there is no main convention that should be used: they can all be used to create an effect, and you can use as many or as little as you want to.



The next question we asked was whether or not people wanted thrillers to have a sequel to continue the story. 60% of people answered yes. The purpose of this question to our thriller opening clip was that when planning our group narrative we had to briefly think about how the film would continue and what we wanted to give away in the first few minutes of the clip. In order to decide on a story line we thought it best to decide whether or not the film could continue and so wanted to make the narrative as interesting as possible, so more films could be made.


When considering the sounds we wanted to use we asked the question shown opposite. What we discovered was that all of the options stating different types of sounds were favoured highly, with the most popular ones being 'Tension building sound' at 35% and 'Silence' at 30%. Whilst I will now focus on these two types of sound in my thriller clip, I have noticed that as all types of sound listed were chosen, then sound must be very important in thrillers. This has made me realise that a lot of thought needs to take place when planning the sound, as this is what mainly builds the tension in thriller films.

When thinking about the characters we wanted to portray in our thriller clip, we already knew that we didn't want a lot of characters as this would lose the audiences attention. We wanted a few characters that would have an impact on the scene. To help us decide on these characters, we asked the question shown opposite. The data told us that the most popular characters that people expected to be in thrillers were a victim, with  35% and a Villain at 25%. We have therefore based our narrative around a victim and a villain with the addition of one other character to help keep the audience interested. This will make our thriller opening conventional as the majority of popular thrillers include an antagonist and protagonist.




When we decided that the age certificate for our thriller opening clip was to be a 15, we decided that instead of focusing on the blood and gore, we should focus on another sub-genre. To help us decide which one, we asked the question shown opposite. The most popular answer was a 'Crime Thriller' at 35%, followed by a 'Supernatural Thriller' at 20% and then A Psychological and Conspiracy thriller, both at 15%. Having looked at these results we decided that the most appropriate sub-genre for our narrative would be a psychological thriller. The reason being, that our narrative is not the stereotypical story that happens in most thrillers, where the film is about the villain killing the victim whom is usually female. Our narrative does not show the actual 'attack' of the victims death, and is also not about the death in the first place. It is about the realisation and the confusion felt of figuring out the little girl we witness walking alone in the forest is actually dead; it has a bigger psychological impact, rather than a visual one.

When deciding on the setting for our thriller clip we decided to ask our target audience, by giving them a variety of typical and untypical settings to a thriller. The most popular answer was a forest at 35%, which happens to fit in with our narrative. This data has made me and my group 100% certain that a forest will be our setting as it fits with the underwater scene in a river, and also makes our thriller opening more conventional.

When asking people what they wanted the purpose to be, all the results were reasonably high. The most popular answer was to create paranoia at 40%, followed closely by creating an enigma at 35%. We have therefore decided to include both in our opening sequence. We are to create paranoia through the little sister walking through the forest looking around cautiously, and an enigma through the confusion of who the killer is, and what led up to the events that we see in the opening clip.


When creating the questionnaire we wanted to ask a variety of open and closed questions to make our results more reliable. An open question is one that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no answer, and so forces the person to give a more detailed answer. A closed question is simply where you answer with one word, such as yes, no or maybe.
By having the 'other' option mixed in with the other available options, we created an open question, giving the audience the opportunity to say what they thought if they wished to. For example, when asking what type of setting our viewers wanted to see, we had a list of options such as a forest, a school and a park, as well as an 'other' option to choose from, if they thought of something that was not listed. The data from this question showed that 5% of people answered 'other', and one of the answers was for the setting to be underground. Having looked at all the pie charts, I can say that the 'other' option/answer was not as popular as simply ticking an answer listed (closed question). However, this doesn't matter as we made our results more reliable by having the option available.

One thing I realised by the open questions not being answered was that people don't like to decide or give their opinion as to what they want to see. I therefore concluded from this that viewers of the thriller genre like to be surprised by what they are watching; it doesn't necessarily matter what the narrative is about, as long as the audience feel something from the suspense and tension created.

Collecting this data has been beneficial as it has given me and my group some help with choosing what aspects such as conventions to use in our opening clip. It has reminded me that I don't have to limit myself by using only one convention (etc), but can use as many as I wish to. It will help me and my group when planning, as it has told us how important each aspect is, and the amount of detail we need to go in, if we want out clip to be effective.

To prove  I have asked the questionnaire myself and have not made up the answers, I have included 2 vox pops, which can be seen below.