Project Research Survey Results

Daniel Hopkins

Firstly, I asked a very simple question by asking the gender of the survey respondent. Of the nine who took my survey, six were male and 3 were female, so there was a more male-leaning. However, as the type of short film I want to do has practically all-male characters and as such male humour, then I do not think that this is a problem.

For the second question I asked how old the person was. All of the respondents were aged between 18 and 24. The reason for this is the fact I myself am 18 years old and thus the majority of the people I distributed it too are going to be of a similar age. However, I wanted young people to be the respondents for the survey more than any other age group, as the short film is aged at a generally younger audience. However, it is also age-neutral in many ways, so I think I could have tried to seek older respondents for less age-biased results.

For the third question in my survey, I asked the respondent what their favourite film genre was. I did this in order to get a sense of what young people generally liked and so I could possibly incorporate various elements of popular genres into my short film. Four selected comedy, which I think shows that young people generally prefer the genre. Despite them being only four of nine, I believe that, from experience, the results would be similar on a bigger scale. Two selected fantasy, which I think my short film can fall under and action, science fiction and horror received one selection each.

For the fourth question in my survey, I asked people to rate their enjoyment for the comedy genre out of 10. I did this to see how many people enjoyed comedy and how they rated it. The results were slightly mixed but no one gave a rating lower than six, which I think shows an overall enjoyment for the genre from the respondents. It also shows that young people enjoy comedy and rate it highly. Two answered 6, one answered 7, two answered 8, one answered 9 and three answered 10. This gives an average score of just over 8 and I think shows a big enjoyment for comedy amongst the respondents.

For the fifth question I asked the respondents what were their view on comedy sketch shows, such as Little Britain and That Mitchell and Webb Look. I believe my short film idea to be in the same style of a sketch, in the way it is quite madcap, fast paced and self-contained. For this reason, I wanted to see if people enjoyed sketch shows. The results were very positive, with five responding with ‘Excellent’, three with ‘Good’ and one with ‘Average’. I think that this shows a strong enjoyment for sketch shows amongst young people. It also reinforces my belief that my short should appeal to this age range.

For the sixth question, I asked what people thought about a cloning comedy short. Though my short is about various personalities and emotions interacting in the mind of a teenager, the basic concept of cloning remains and so I kept this simple theme when asking the question. Three selected ‘Excellent’, five selected ‘Good’ and one selected ‘Average’. This shows that people generally like the idea and I am pleased with these results. It also shows that the core concept of my short film will be enjoyed by the respondents.

For the seventh question, I asked what people thought makes a comedy funny. There were various responses but the general consensus was that the jokes were witty, well-timed and delivered well. Some respondents also believed chemistry between people in a comedy helped it to be funny. The respondents had very different reasons for what they thought makes a comedy funny, though they all had very legitimate answers. I will try and use the suggested reasons during my short film, as I hope by catering for many different people’s comedy tastes, the project will be more successful.

For the final question in my survey, I asked what people thought would make the clone comedy funny. People had different reasons, including involving puns, innuendo and sarcasm, as well as the interaction between the clones. I will try and create a good chemistry between the characters in order to make the film more believable as well as try and use various types of jokes to appeal to many different people. This will include slapstick, wit, intelligence and reference humour.

Overall, I believe that I gained some very informative and interesting information from my survey and it will help me throughout the production stages of my project. By using suggestions from respondents, I shall attempt to create a short that caters for many different types of comedy fans by employing various comedic approaches.