Our Potential Target Audience Questionare

1.   What is your favourite film genre to watch? 

2.   What period in time would you prefer a film to be set in?

3.   Do you prefer thriller films that are easy to follow or that are complex?

4.   Who is your favourite actor that is associated with the Thriller genre?

5.   Who is your favourite actress that is associated with the Thriller genre?

6.   What is your all time favourite Thriller film?

7.    In your opinion, who is the best director of a Thriller film

8.   What is your preferred Thriller sub-genre? E.g. Horror Thriller, Religious Thriller, Action Thriller…

9.   What music do you think you would be likely to hear in a thriller film? 

10.  Do you think opening sequences are more effective with actors in or with just the titles and a simple backdrop?

  

Answers to the Questionnaire

1) Two people said animation, six people said thriller, four people said comedy, two people said drama, two people said science fiction and       two people said action.

2) One person said the past, fourteen people said the present and three people said the future.

3) Twelve people said complex and six people said easy to follow.

4) Two people said Will Smith, two people said Matt Damon, one person said Vincent Price, two people said Liam Neeson, three people said     Tom Cruise, one person said Alex Petifer, one person said Kevin Spacey, two people said Morgan Freeman, one person said Woody             Harrolson, three people said Anthony Hopkins and one person said Cary Grant.

 5) One person said Sigourney Weaver, two people said Angelina Jolie, one person said Tippi Hedren, one person said Maggie Grace, one          person said Uma Therman, one person said Genna Davis, three people said Jodie Foster, two people said Naomi Watts, one person said      Susan Sarandon, two people said Dame Judy Dench, one person said Gwyneth Paltrow, one person said Jamie Lee Curtis and one              person said Glenn Close.

6) One person said 'After Earth', one person said 'The Talented Mr. Ripley', one person said 'The Birds', two people said 'Taken', one person       said 'Bourne Identity', one person said 'Jack Reacher', two people said 'The Impossible', one person said 'Sleeping With The Enemy', one       person said 'The Fugitive', two people said 'Se7en' ,one person said 'Heat', two people said 'The Silence of the Lambs', one person said         'North by Northwest' and one person said 'Fatal Attraction'.

  

7) One person said Steven Spielberg, one person said Anthony Minghella, three people said Alfred Hitchcock, one person said Pierre Morel,     three people said Sir Ridley Scott, two people said Juan Antonio Bayona, one person said Joseph Ruben, two people said David Fincher,     one person said Tony Scott and three people said Jonathan Demme.  

8) Eleven people said action thriller, four people said horror thriller, two people said psychological thriller and one person said crime thriller.

9) Nine people said loud, four people said quiet, fourteen people said fast paced, six people said slow paced, ten people said aggressive and    violent and two people said soft and gentle.

10) Thirteen people said titles and simple backdrop and five people said actors.

Analysis of our questionnaire

We did thorough research into what type of thrillers the public like as we want our opening sequence to be as good as possible. We compiled a questionnaire and gave it out to eighteen people to fill in. This is because it is important for us to know what people like and want to see in a thriller film because then we can give them what they want and our thriller film is more likely to be a success.

The answers to the first question show that people like science fiction, comedy and action. Therefore, we could try to include aspects of these if we were taking our film further. Comedy in our film might be slightly challenging to include because thrillers are full of suspense and do not easily lend themselves to the inclusion of light-hearted moments, but we could consider adding some amusing sections into it. For example we might use comedy to provide some light relief after a particularly  frightening or thrilling section. Finding out about favourite thriller film actors and actresses was interesting for me because I looked on YouTube at clips of examples of thriller movies each actor and actress that was mentioned in my questionnaire had been in. Many different actors and actresses were named by those answering the questionnaire and this shows what a large and varied genre the thriller genre is. From the different film directors that we were given I looked at clips of their work and we tried to see what they include in their filming and interpreted it so that we could use it as inspiration for our opening sequence. 

I was also interested to look at what sub-genres of thrillers appeal to the majority of people in my questionnaire because we could look at them and see if we could make our film fit into this subgenre and give it a wider appeal. Action thriller is the most popular sub-genre. Aspects of this subgenre are easy to include in our thriller film because we just need to have certain key features such as props. We used the information about peoples' favourite  thriller films to look at their title sequences for inspiration for our film. 

From the question about the plot line it is shown that people mostly like complex plot lines because they have to pay attention so that they don't miss any vital information. This will make the audience engage more with the film and make them more susceptible to the anticipation and suspense. Therefore we tried to make our opening sequence complex by not giving the audience too much information about the story line and making it possible to interpret the story line in a number of different ways. From the answers given to the questionnaire, it is also very obvious that people prefer films set in the present day,  and this is probably because people find it easier to engage with the characters and form a relationship with them as they can relate to their situation. The next most popular answer was that people like films to be set in the future although this was noticeably less popular. It may be that this would give the audience the possibility of a glimpse into their own future. It is also clear that people prefer the title sequence to be against a simple backdrop because this is more striking. We also chose our backdrop to be straightforward so that it doesn't give too much  away. However although most people said that they did not want to see actors in the title sequence, we decided to include them as a way of introducing them to the audience at the beginning of the film.

Finally one question was about music, this was important to us because the music must fit perfectly with our opening titles. Music in a film allows the scene to be set and shows the characters feelings and mood. Music can also be used as a tool to build up suspense with and is often used in thriller films. From our research people were mostly evenly spread over the answers we provided with some in favour of certain music such as fast paced and aggressive and violent music being used in thriller films.
We will take all of these results into consideration whilst we make our film and plan it.