Analysis of Audience Research Questions and Results

Below is my analysis of my audience research questionnaire, this is important for our decisions of our upcoming filming and ideas as this will be vital for our decisions, although i may not directly use all of these results as my two other group members are creating a questionnaire also so they may want to use the information they have extracted from the public.

Question One Results - What age group are you?

This was a basic question to show what age the people completing the survey was, it worked out well as at least one person had completed the survey from each age group, even one from a 62+ year old which i was pleased about as the survey was handed out to an near equal age range of people, also this proves that the age range of my genre should probably be based around the age of a 16 year old as these were the people who seemed most keen, although I could provide entertainment to an older audience.

Question Two Results - On a beginning of a film how would you like the starting credits and titles to be shown?

The results for this were varied, I can disregard the last option 'In short bursts with lots of texts' as this only scored 12% and I see yes this is important but the other two results scored more in percentages. Broken up over a period of time (title, action, title, action) scored the most winning 19 votes (46.3%) and the next was 'All Shown At Once' that scored (41.5%), this has given me evidence to prove that in the film i am making that definitely it should be 'title, action, title, action...' as it was the most popular and it was the idea me and my group had so that we can convey good filming techniques in a swift way where we can change the frames after each piece of text.

This question I thought was vital to ask so it gave me and my group information that we can know how we should create the first scene, this is where 'The Active Audiece' comes into play, because this is a decoding process going on among the active audience who are not just using media for gratification purposes, and they are actively accepting and refining parts of media and breaking it down and looking at the signs inside the text, this is why this question was important because it shows how much the signs in film first scenes and all media influences how you interpret it.

Question Three Results - On a beginning of film in the titles what colour do you think would compliment a black background? (You may select more than one answer)

White clearly won this as its percentage was 75.6% (31 people), this is a clear
choice and I am happy that white will be used in the titles as over three quarters have agreed that it should be used as a colour for text.

AlthoughHayden Simmons a group member on the other hand had the results that red would look most effective on a black background, this diversity has created a dilemma as we now need to decide what colour we will chose, or if it will be a range, this we plan to talk and debate when we have a conversation about our initial ideas.

The fact this differ in results came up is generally because it shows we had different people complete our questionnaires and that people have different modes of address, this is when media is created in a way that it is designed for a specific person or group (age,sex etc..) and over the period of the peoples life who have answered the questionnaires obviously they have differeny modes of address and they interpret some things differently, on the other hand it suggests that white and red is everyone's average colour they associate titles for a horror to be.

Question Four Results - On a the title and credits of a film what type of sound would you prefer?

I have decided looking at the results that the leading result should be used (a full length consistent song) as this I think adds depth to the film as it gives the audience something to hear, using these results we have decided that we will use a song in our opening scene, as this questionnaire and another from my group (Hayden Simmons and Michayla Oglesby) so we decided that having a song would be very relevant and would be good for the audience.

Question Five Results - Do you think looking at the image of nine frames of the film Contact that it was an effective first scene?

For this question I have decided just to discount the eight people who posted 'I Don't Know' and looked at the rest of the results, it is a clear 'Yes' answer and I believe that knowing this has pleased me as now I can look at my deconstruction of the first scene and suggest to use ideas from this film as obviously this worked.

Question Six Results - In Horror films what type of techniques do you like being used to keep you entertained? (ways to keep you tense and hopefully scared)

The results for this were mixed as some said mainly either 'What we hear but cannot see' and 'What we see but the character cannot', but this has given me ideas for our groups own production of the first scene as we think now an aspect like these would be very relevant for the context and would work well.

Question Seven Results (Actual text written by the people who completed questionnaire) - For the question above (In Horror films what type of techniques do you like being used to keep you entertained?) please can you explain your reasons

This was a good question to end on I thought, this was because I had asked many closed multiple choice questions so this gave the audience a chance to write in detail an explanation without asking them too much and boring them with too lengthy questions.

Although this was a good question the outcome of asking this was varied, some didn't do it what I would say there best efforts but i received very relevant comments such as 'Its scary and builds up tension for you and the character' and 'Its builds up suspense when you can see the character from a distance and it appears that you are seeing them from another persons viewpoint as if they are watching or stalking them' 'You are scared for the characters and want to know what is to happen to them and if they will realise what you can see, it can be a tense nerve racking experience!'.

This last question has hints to prove that the Cultivation Theory is in actually a real working thing, because comments such as '..because it's cool that way' and 'I like HORROR' seem to show the trend in that there previous times watching Horror genre films have made them that the Horror element does not have as big effect on them as it would about people twenty years ago people in the same situation. The Horror audience on a whole now seem to be a result of less effect when watching violence, gory and 'scary' scenes. Also it shows in twinned with the Cultivation theory aspects of Desensitisation as people are being exposed to explicit things more and more so they become less sensitive, also it gives the impression of things being filmed to be reflected with real things, for example all around the worlds people thing and associate things with what they have seen on television and now stereotype the people or objects as having certain traits, and this is only good if they are correct, but lots of the time they are not. Also on the good side of Desensitisation it allows you to raise questions about the amount of representations we should be witnessing.