Primary research

PRIMARY RESEARCH: ANALYSIS

Aim: To gain an insight into how the public view short films and a potential TA.

Participants: 12 males and 20 females.5 from outside VUE cinema in Leicester square, 10 film students, 10 people outside of VUE cinema in Harrow and 7 family and friends.

Methodology: Ask people coming out of the cinemas in Leicester square at the time of the London film festival to fill in the survey. The same was done at the cinema in Harrow, but there was no festival going on in that area. Getting students who study film and media studies to fill out the survey. Having my friends and family fill out the survey also.

Findings: 23 people were aged between 15 - 25, which took over the majority of the participants while the other age groups didn't have that many participants.

PRIMARY RESEARCH: SURVEY

I used this as the first question on the survey in order to understand just how many males and females answered the questions. This would then help me to understand more about the gender I would use in my TA. I wanted an even number of both males and females but a lot of the men wouldn't stop to answer questions.

QUESTION 1

This question was done to establish the type of age group my TA would fall under. Due to me asking a lot of students the highest age range was 15 - 25 year olds. The lowest age range was 35 - 45.

QUESTION 2

This is one of the most important questions and from the results I found that a lot of people do not watch short films, this could be because of the majority of 15 -25 year olds I asked, as people in this age group are more inclined to go and watch feature length films. Although there was a small proportion of this group that had actually watched a short film.

QUESTION 3

For this question I already predicted what the outcome would be due to the results of the previous question. As suspected 1- 2 was the highest value for the amount of short films, my participants had seen, showing me that my participants were not familiar with the codes and conventions of a short film.

QUESTION 4

In this question I was not surprised to see that Teen, romance and thriller were the popular genres. The minorities of fantasy and action were a result of the small proportion of males and 35- 45 and 45+ age groups. From this graph I am able to establish which genre my TA would enjoy watching the most. The popularity of the teen and romantic drama genre’s are a result of my target audience mainly being aged between 25-35 therefore many people in this age group are interested in those genre’s as a mean to escape from their everyday life.

QUESTION 5

After gaining some information about short films in general. I wanted to get information on my preferred genre of film which was a teen drama. I asked this question in order to get some ideas on what they think actually happens, so I can think of scenarios to happen in my film. The highest ranking scenarios were: relationships breaking up, bullying and teenage pregnancy

QUESTION 6

This question is similar to the one prior but here I wanted to know what my audience would want in a teen drama and not what actually happens already. The results changed slightly but not drastically and a lot more people, would like teenage pregnancy to be the main focus and family issues which increased a lot. I think bullying is a overused subject in teen drama and the public wants a change, which its preference was so low.

QUESTION 7

This was the last of the closed questions and I wanted to find out what sorts of music my audience would hear, in order to establish what sorts of music I should use in my film that will add to the narrative and create tension. Dramatic and tension building was the highest with 28% and Upbeat and lively coming in second with 22%, the next was slow and sad. From this I would use dramatic and slow and sad, as the two styles juxtapose and can help to show changes in emotion in my film.

QUESTION 8

In addition to the closed questions, I also asked my participants a set of open questions that aimed to gain more of an insight into the views my participants held on certain issues

that I was considering to have in my film.

The answers to these question’s helped me to understand what my audience thought about issues such as Teenage pregnancy and I can then tailor these views into my own

film.

The key responses to the question’s are on the next slide.

OPEN QUESTIONS

QUALITATIVE FINDINGS

CONCLUSIONS

Conclusions: There was a noticeable bias with the amount of people who watched short films that were film and media studies students in comparison to the rest of the participants. A lot of the participants from Leicester square were particularly drawn to comedy and drama genres as opposed to the others, this could be because of the films that were showing that day at the cinema. A large majority of the participants were teens and early 20's, this could be because mainly young people visit the cinemas nowadays and a lot of them said that they would like a film that had teenagers as the main characters, due to this I will base my target audience on teens by making my lead characters teens. After analysing my findings I have decided to create a teen drama, with teens as the main focus. I will focus my issues on family issues, relationships and teenage pregnancy focusing on the negative aspects of these topics.