Audience ResearchLucy Jenkins

Audience research is vital if a film is to be successful as it ensures the narrative will appeal to the audience. To understand what our target audience is we have written a questionnaire which has certain questions tailored to inform us of what needs to be included within our opening sequence.

Our opening question ‘What Gender do you identify with?’ allows us to gather information about our audience and who is most likely to watch our film. The chart to the left indicated that our audience is mainly made up of females, however, the male percentage being at 37% shows how out of the 19 people

that took part in the survey the genders were not completely one sided so I believe we have a good balance. We also had one individual who has chosen not specify their gender which implies gender will not affect how the narrative shouldshould be portrayed.

The responses to ‘How old are you?’ have shown that the main percentage of our audience is 12-16 year olds and 36-45 year olds. Theses audiences are very separate and creating a narrative that will suit both a mature and young audience will be extremely difficult and therefore we’ll have to take into account how mature our audience is. Looking at the other age groups the bars on the chart the ages are well distributed meaning that our film will have to suit a large range of people. Due to the nature of gritty realism films and their tendency to discuss difficult social issues as a group we should aim to follow the convention’s theme whilst showing it in a PG friendly manner.

Despite over 60% of our audience being aware of the Gritty Realism genre, many weren’t. Overall this is not an issue as it will not affect an audience’s ability to learn from the film or to enjoy it. However, viewers of our opening sequence may struggle to adapt to the appearance and themes within our film if they’re used to blockbuster movies as they differentiate dramatically.

Within our questionnaire we asked our audience what themes appeal to them within a film. ‘Humour’ was voted for the most and our favoured theme, mental illness, was one of the lowest scoring answers. What this told us is that mental illness is rarely discussed and that instead people chose to watch a film as a form of relaxation and due to this they tend to steer clear of a film with a moral message hidden within it. Despite not appealing to the masses I think the results to this question proved that mental illness needs to be presented within the film industry in a way that people can relate to it. We understand that it will be difficult and that we will only be attractive to a niche market but if we present the narrative in an interesting day it can encourage more viewers.

We created a questions that would decide which social issue we focused our opening sequence on. Mental illness collected the most votes with 40% whereas gender identity made up 35%. 25% of the votes were made from our audience voting for neither of the two options. From previous questions we understand that the people who answered our survey preferred films that don’t demand so much thought but we want our opening sequence to trigger enigma codes.

Most of our audience said that they prefer the protagonist of a film to be a young adult or middle aged. From this data we now know that we should aim to find an actor within this age range because it will help our audience to focus on the narrative of the film if they relate to the main characters.

This question is important to our group because it stresses how vital a compelling narrative within the opening sequence is as this determines whether our audience continues to watch our film or turns it off. Within our lesson we discussed this questions between ourselves in a focus group in which we all agreed that our opening sequence is extremely important.

Our last questions indicated that the music is important to our audience and so within our opening sequence we shall insure that any soundtrack we use is specific to our narrative and also relevant to the current trends. This question also had the option for a written response if the audience member selected ‘Other’. The results are shown below and prove that our opening sequence must intrigue the audience through use of good filming and an interesting narrative.

To conclude I think that this exercise was exceptionally effective in enabling us to understand our target audience and what we must do as a group to create a successful opening sequence.