Audience Research - getting started

Remember, without a clear idea of who your audience is your film opening is unlikely to be a success.  Secondly, audiences are closely linked to genre - it is because of audiences that genres exist, because audiences like to know what to expect when they go to see a film.

You will need to reflect on your genre research and think about why audiences enjoy watching that type of film you are going to make.  With that in mind, you are able to start developing a questionnaire.

As well as considering some audience theory (pick and mix theory, uses and gratifications) we need to be able to classify our audience first.  We need to know who they are and what makes them tick.

How do institutions use this information? 

Well, not only do they carry out extensive research into audiences, but they also carry out test screenings of some films to gauge an audiences reaction, to know whether to change endings, make cuts, etc.   Why is it that DVDs have so many deleted scenes and alternate endings?  Because of the audiences, because they ultimately pay to watch your film, because audiences matter.

Where do you start?

Most people decide to do a questionnaire targeted at their preferred audience.  Next week you will be looking at age ratings and classifications and will use these results to help build a profile of your typical preferred audience (psychographic profile). 

Many students make really bad questionnaires without thinking about what it is they want to achieve. You have an idea of what type of film genre you want to produce, so make it relevant to what you want to make.  If you don't, what you end up with is a series of useless answers and irrelevant pie charts.

So think hard about the type of questions you want to ask your audiences, and explain (to me and examiner) why you are asking them.  See this example by a student and note how she thought about why she wanted to ask these questions.

http://astleyemmaasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/horrorthriller-film-genre-audience.html

Methods

Don't just use a plain paper questionnaire, be creative.  Use survey monkey https://www.surveymonkey.com/ to help you create a quick online tool that will do the hard work for you.  Remember to post this on Facebook and Twitter to get more success.  A questionnaire completed by four of your best friends is a pretty lame start; a questionnaire completed by 20+ teenagers/adults of varying background might yield more interesting results.

You can also do surveys, voting polls and even video interviews (VOX pops) about what they like or dislike about certain film genres.  The example below is certainly not perfect, and seems more like an homage to Made in Chelsea, but it is showing students engaging with the task and having fun.  Fun people, making films is fun!

BLOG = (THOUGHT PROCESS + ACTION + CREATIVITY) / RELEVANCE

Once you have completed your audience research you should reflect on the process of researching your audience and what your findings show you.  Don't just do things without considering how they are taking your project one step closer to completion.

Blog on!