Audience research
Last year we did our audience research on survey monkey, where we designed a questionnaire. This year we have again decided to use survey monkey as it is a clear and simple way to gather our results that we need. We have asked 6 simple questions which we believe will help us pick a target audience and see if the results are applicable:
1. How old are you?
2. How often do you watch short films?
3. What would make you want to see a short film?
4. What is the most important convention for you when watching a drama?
5. How often do you watch dramas?
6. Have you watched any of these dramas?
In a way, this is one of the most important questions to ask when researching on audience. This is because it will highlight what age group is your target audience, which as I learnt last year is a very important thing because it helps tailor the film to meet the needs of the target audience and what they like. For example, last year our film was a thriller and we looked at the conventions of a thriller then what conventions are targeted towards young adults and we linked those together. Typically, films aimed towards young adults will be fast edited with lots of story and usually fun, whereas editing for older people will usually have a more serious and slower effect. However it is important to remember this is just a general idea and not set in stone and applicable to every young person or every adult.
We found that the majority of our audience was aged 16-24 years old (72%) and following this was the 50 plus category with 11% of the population then the 12-15 category had 5%, This shows us that again our target audience is going to be young adults which we will have good knowledge on from our film last year. However, a problem with the way we asked this question is that films sometimes have 18 age ratings and we set this category 16-24, Really we should have set it so that if you were 18 and over it was clarified as now we do not know whether we can add elements of an 18 rating film if we need or want to. As it was a anonymous questionnaire we also don't know who to recall to answer if they were 18 or over this time.
Despite this, we now have our target audience of young adults (16-24) which means that we can have elements of a 15 rated film and possibly elements of an 18 rated.
This question has helped us to understand how much our target audience watches short films. The results were good for this question, only one person answered that they never watched short films and the majority of people answered that they watched short films a few times a month, once or twice week or a few times a year or once a day. This is positive because it means that our target audience is a reliable and representative source to be showing our short films too whereas maybe another target audience like young children or elderly people would't have as good results.
It is important that we know how often are target audience watch short films before we start planning because if they never watched them then there would be no point making them. At the moment, the results show that we are tailoring our film to a niche audience as this is only representative of 13 young people not the whole of the UK. However, this does give us some idea into how young people are watching films. We are considering at the minute doing a second questionnaire asking where people watch films, watch short films , feature films etc. as this will help us when we finally finish our film. From personal experience, I tend to see a lot of short films or videos called 'vines' (video pranks/jokes) on Facebook and Instagram. I do not rely on youtube as much as I used to when i wanted to watch short films. Danni however, relies on youtube much more than I do and is a regular user of the site so it is an interesting question that we could ask.
This question helps us to identify the most important element/convention for our short film and the results show that the most important element is a good plot. This allows us to research a lot more deeply into what atlas 50% of our target audience believe the most important element of a short film is.
This is very important information as it shows what will encourage people to go and see our short film,
Obviously we will still take other answers into account seriously but the biggest response shows that we should definitely focus on a good plot. The second biggest answer was well known actors which obviously an unrealistic expectation but it gives us a good insight to what people want, As we obviously do not have links to well known actors what we can take into account is that people want good acting in the films that they watch. This will probably mean we will ask someone who is taking A-Level drama to be the main character in our film as hopefully they will be good at acting or at least will have ideas when it comes to what makes a good actor. Despite this, we will still hold auditions this year.
We will hold auditions because this will give us a choice and variety of what we can have in our film and also people who aren't successful in getting a role we can give them any background roles if they would like to as this year i imagine we will be using more actors this year as we are doing a full film not the first 2 minutes.
The results also show that music is also a factor to take into account. Last year we only used royalty free music but this year we have decided we will email production and label companies and ask them for their permission to use their music if we find something we particularly like. Royalty free music is usually not particularly good, and most the time you still have to pay for it.
We asked this question so that we could find out what we should be focusing on when we are planning our drama and what conventions are most important.
The results show that plot and actors are definitely the most important conventions when watching a drama. An interesting plot is the highest scorer with 61% and plot twist is the second biggest scorer with 22% so it shows that we should definitely research into plot and make sure we get our plot right 100%. To do this, we may send our script to Jan who was a lecturer at Bournemouth University for Film and Media and has produced his own films including short films so he can check it and we can get his professional opinion on it.
To make our film interesting we are going to put a lot of tim and effort into planning our script and storyboard and mind map lots of direct ideas and outcomes for the characters. We are also now going to take into account making a plot twist and looking at plot twists in films that already exist. " A plot twist is a radical change in the expected direction or outcome of the plot of a novel, film, television series, comic, video game, or other work of narrative. It is a common practice in narration used to keep the interest of an audience, usually surprising them with a revelation." - Wikipedia
Also, the issue of actors has come up again and as I have already said Danni and I will be holding auditions so we find the best actors for our current situation, and this audition will hopefully include a student who is studying theatre studies/drama.
We asked this question so that we could find out whether our target audience was a reliable source for finding analysis our dating from the questionnaire and applying it to drama.
The results show that nobody has never watched a drama, and it shows that at least half of our target audience watch dramas frequently. 16% of people watched dramas once a day, 37% watched dramas once or twice a week, another 38% of people watched drams a few times a month and only 5% watched dramas a few times a year.
This is a positive response because it shows that our target audience watch dramas quiet frequently which means that we have a reliable sample to make conclusions and predictions on over our target audience. For example, now that we know who our target audience is and that the watch drama films we can start making links between the two, for example, what conventions in dramas are best for our target audience - should we be using fast editing to show quick dramatic scenes or slow edition to show emotion?
These are questions that we need to start considering before we fully plan our script and storyboard as this will allow us to make sure our film is successful with our target audience and meets their needs whilst also showing our drama.
Even though this question was meant to help us establish what existing products were available for us to look at I designed this question poorly.
The first problem with this question is that you can only pick one answer so participants couldn't say if they had watched multiple films which is problematic. Secondly I didn't give people the option to answer that they hadn't watched any of these films so they just skipped the question instead but them skipping the question does not give me and Danni a clear answer on what films people have watched or haven't watched or if they just do not want to answer the question. Finally, I listed feature films with aspects of bullying's or popular drama films. This doesn't help us at all as we are looking at short films so the findings are completely invalid. However, me and Danni may do a contextual analysis of 1 feature film and 2 short films then compare them at the end to see how they differ and if we can find any themes between them.
Despite these design flaws this question helps us to establish what films and types of films people are watching and if we analyse the data further we can get a rough percentage of what our target audience are watching. Even though these films aren't short films we can still watch them to look at drama conventions but we may have to tweak our findings and conclusions to be applicable to short films.