Primary and Secondary Audience Survey

Audience Research

Gender

First of all, we asked participants what their gender was. Doing this gave us information on the gender breakdown of audiences from different films which allowed us to understand which types of films attracted which types of audiences. Unfortunately more females than males completed our survey, making our results partially biased. However, we can conclude from this that females are more likely to be interested in ‘Coming of Age’ films therefore we should adapt our opening sequence to suit this particular audience.

AgeNext, we asked participants how old they were. The majority of the people who answered our survey were aged 13-17 however we also received data from people aged 18-24 and 35-44. By using a research group made up of participants from different age groups, we were able to reach conclusions about both our primary and secondary audiences.

As the majority of our participants were aged 13-17, we were able to learn how we should adapt our opening sequence to suit them as we intend for our target audience to be of this age bracket. Using participants from different age groups allowed us to understand how we should include certain codes and conventions to make our opening sequence suitable for our secondary audience.

Question 1: What are your

favourite ‘Coming of Age’ films?

Next, we asked the participants what their favourite ‘Coming of Age’ films were. Doing this allowed us to understand which films of this genre are the most popular. Films that our participants frequently mentioned were, ‘The Breakfast Club’, ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Easy A’. From this, we learnt which styles and narratives were most popular.

Question 1: What are your favourite ‘Coming of Age’

films? (continued)

This information is useful as we can include some of the techniques, used in these ‘Coming of Age’ films, in our opening sequence in order in insure it’s popularity and success.

Question 2: Please rank your

favourite film genres.

Next, we asked our participants to rank each of the film genres (1 being the most popular, and 8 being the least popular). The genres we asked them to rank were: Comedy; Action; Adventure; Romantic; Drama; Horror; Thriller and Animated. By asking this question, we learnt that our participants favoured films of a comic genre and didn’t seem to show a preference for horror films.

By finding out which genre our participants preferred, we can now adapt our opening sequence to suit their tastes in order to engage our primary and secondary audience. This would not only make our film more enjoyable for our target audience, but it would make it much more successful.

Question 3: What makes

a film enjoyable for

you?

Next, we asked our participants what they enjoyed about films in order to gain an insight into the preferred codes and conventions of our target audience. The answers we received stated that they liked it when there was “lots of comedy and action” and when there was “character development and emotional depth” and “good script, believable characters and a plot that made sense”.

Question 3: What makes a film enjoyable

for you? (continued)

This information suggests that in our opening sequence, we need to make sure that our audience are able to relate and connect to the characters. We also need to make sure that we have a strong narrative that is clear to the audience and we need to include elements of comedy that both our primary and secondary audience can understand. This will contribute to the success of our opening sequence.

Question 4: What don’t you

enjoy about films?

Our next question was, “What don’t you enjoy about films?” We asked our participants this so that we could gather information on which codes and conventions caused our target audience to dislike certain films. Some of the answers we received stated that they don’t enjoy it “when they have long non-descript storylines…gratuitous sex and violence” and they don’t like it “if the plot like drags out” or “when they’re too slow”.

Question 4: What don’t you

enjoy about films?

This taught us that we need to make sure that our opening sequence introduces the audience to the narrative of the film straight away in order to captivate the audiences attention and keep them engaged throughout the film. We also need to make sure that both our primary and secondary audience are able to relate to the film’s narrative and are both able to enjoy the film without losing interest.

Question 5: What ‘Coming of Age’ films have you

seen?Next we gave our participants a list of films, that we had already looked at as part of our ‘Coming of Age’ film research, and asked them to tell us which films they had seen. We learnt from this that the most popular film on the list was ‘Mean Girls’ followed by ‘Juno’ and the least popular films were ‘The Graduate’ and ‘The 400 Blows’.

Asking our participants this question taught us which films had a wider fan base and which were more relevant and well-known to our target audience. This means that we have evidence of which codes and conventions our audience are aware of and which methods have proved to be successful, thus allowing us to follow in their footsteps.

Question 6: Which of these films did you like and why?

Finally, we asked our participants which of the films, on our list, they liked and why. We learnt that they enjoyed these films because they were good at “explaining teenage feelings” and because they “found them very relatable. This furthers the notion that we need to make sure that both our primary and secondary audience need to be able to relate to narrative due to the codes and conventions of this particular genre. Additionally, we were given a larger impression on how comedy contributes to the success of a ‘Coming of Age’ film.

Question 6: Which of these films did you like and why?