Questionnaire analysis

The target audience for our film will be 16/17/18yr olds. Our questionnaire was designed to research what our target audience wants, but specifically aimed at our idea of superheroes, to see if our audience would watch it.

1) What is your favourite film genre?
Most people who answered our questionnaire said they preferred the genre comedy, followed closely by action and thriller. We have used these results in modifying our idea to include comedic aspects. We had previously agreed to have the main genres of thriller and action. Romance, horror and crime were the least chosen in our questionnaire, leading for us to believe that our target audience does not or rarely watches movies of this genre.

2) Do you enjoy special effects?
12 people out of the 20 people we asked said they didn’t like special effects in a film. Only 2 said yes and the remainder said occasionally. We have decided from this that we will keep editing simple, and not use special effects.

3) Do you prefer credits before or after the film?
12 people said they didn’t mind. 4 said end and 4 said start. From this information we can confirm that our target audience doesn’t mind when the credits are. This could be insinuating that they don’t pay attention to them and/or that they are probably seen as an annoyance. We will avoid any credits at the start of our film, like “The Blue Tower” and “The Incredibles”, avoiding how “Flubber” opens with credits.

4) What music do you prefer at the start of a film?
Indie, RnB, Rock and “no sound except diegetic sound” all received equal votes of 4. Classical and no sound at all were the least chosen. Using these results, we have decided our audience will like more contemporary styles of music at the beginning of the film. This coincides well with how we wanted the opening to go, with each of the three characters having their own theme tune using these styles of music.

5) How many characters would you like to see at the start of the film?
Most people chose 4 characters, with the least amount of people choosing over 5. I asked one of the people who completed the questionnaire why they wouldn’t want a film to have more than 5 main characters in the opening of the film and he said plainly that it was just too confusing. From this we can say that our target audience believes less is more when it comes to main characters in the opening of a film. We are still going to stick with having 3 mains characters at the start of our film contrary to the fact that most people said they wanted 4 main characters. This was because we believe our opening is slightly confusing anyway, and we wouldn’t want to totally confuse and intimidate our viewers.

6) What would you watch a film about superheroes?
17 people out of the 20 people asked, stated that they would watch a film about superheroes. This question was basically to just see if people would watch a film similar to what our film opening will be about.

7) What type of powers would you suggest the superheroes have?
Lightning speed was chosen the most in this question as we expected. We had previously discussed our characters having other powers other than lightning speed but came to the conclusion that they would need large amounts of special effects (apart from high intelligence, which incidentally was only chosen by 2 people). The lightning speed of our superheroes will come into play after the occurrence happens, when the 3 characters run through their surroundings and meet on a street corner.

8) What different background setting would you prefer?
On this question we used the locations we were planning on filming in the initial idea stage of our project. The least popular was a field, with only 1 person choosing it. We assumed this would be because it is an uninteresting setting, especially in the Fenland District as there are no hills, just plain flat fields. 40% of our target audience chose “street” as the background setting they would prefer. We were debating whether the characters should all meet on a street corner or in the middle of a field. We have chosen to make them meet on a street corner as this would hopefully please them the most. 25% of our target audience would prefer a school background setting. I asked one of the people who completed a questionnaire why they chose school and I found out it was because they could relate to characters in a school situation more than in the others, as they are all students. We have decided to diversify from just having the school as our main setting and having other ones to try and capture the attention of other 16/17/18 year olds in different situations e.g work in an office.