Audience Research : Opinions on movies

At this moment in time, my initial survey has had 39 replies and this allows me to analyze a wider audience to see potentially which audiences are interested in my film.


Gender

56.4% of replies were from Males, 43.6% from Females
There was little to no real difference in tastes in movie from the audience selection


Age

We have had

Under 16s: 3

16-25: 7

26-35: 8

36-45: 12

46-55:9

So, as a whole, I have a range of statistics from the everywhere from Under 16 to 55

Genre

As a whole, the most popular genre was Comedy, which 13 Votes / 33.3% of people ranked in their top 3, however my trailer fits, potentially, into Thriller and Action which received 11 Votes/ 28.2%, both at joint third behind Drama. The definite popularity of these two genres is reassuring to me, showing that there is a large potential audience



I also chose to put a second Audience question about Genre that would help expose what audiences thought about each other. My question was "My reasoning behind this question is that it would potentially help me see whether I was latching onto a niche audience or whether I could capture the Mainstream audience, however there was anoter motive behind this question, to discover whether audiences felt un-catered for, for example Andy answered my questionaire and said that he believed that people his age's tastes were 'less diverse' and this opinionof his was probably triggered by the fact that the films aimed at people of his age range (36-45) did not contain enough 'Action' and 'Arthouse', the two forms of film that he specifically mentioned. So essentially, in theory there is an untapped audience, there was an overwhelming 1/3 of people answering my survey stating that they felt that many people their age enjoyed Drama, when they themselves enjoyed Action and Thrillers.

Regularity

The regularity with which people visited the Cinema showed that a resoundingly large figure of 56.4% of people visited the Cinema twice monthly, this would suggest to me that people go and see films pretty consistently and this may suggest that people aren't too picky about going to see films and they, due to the regularity of their schedule, might want to go and see something odd. The 7.7% of people who go 3-4 times a month, and the 2.6% who goes weekly or more, would in my opinion go to the film sheerly because they enjoy the cinema experience or they are very interested in film, at which point they would be willing to go and see up coming directors.

As well as this, the quantity of DVDs bought per month is quite staggering, with a vaste majority of people buying, renting or downloading films, 2 or more times a month, this probably means, unless my audience are incredibly wealthy, the price of the DVD on release should be low, because with low-budget films, there is no way that you can ask for a large price, and people will be much more likely to take a risk buying a new director's film if it costs £5 than if it costs £16-20

Effective Methods of Advertising

Conclusively people ticked the box for 'Word of Mouth' 69.2% of the time and Reviews 56.4% of the time, no-one who filled in the survey did not fill in either of these two boxes, which means that these are the two most effective ways of advertising to people, other than perhaps the Trailer itself. Suggestions as to where they got their information were places such as: Rottentomatoes.com (3), Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo (3) , Empire Magazine (1), The Guardian (8), The Metro (1), Youtube (3), facebook (2), Time Out (3), Twitter (1), Observer (1) and the New York Times (1). This showed that actually newspaper and radio were still an effective way of reaching the audience and people still trust written review over youtube, facebook or twitter.

What people look for in a film

This was one of the few questions where there was a spread of answers with over 10% of people voting for each diffent section; 'Famous Director, Famous Cast, Storyline, Genre, Trailer and Nominations' - However Storyline won conclusively with 41% of the vote with Trailer and Nominations both as 15% or so, however if you think about it a Trailer is meant to express a storyline and show nominations and reviews, so I took that trailer is actually the most important way of demonstrating the aspect in question

Poster Work: Gone Baby Gone

I like this poster because it highlights the single, central character, due to his pose, he looks like he is potentially mourning. The gun in his hand shows that he is willing to go to extreme lengths for vengeance, and also the background and the way that the sun is rising suggests that he has limited time. This of course fits in with my theme. The simpleness of the font and the use of a simple tag line means that not too much is going on in the poster, often posters try to have too much in them, this however gives little away as to the plot of the film. The rising sun also provides rich colour, so there is a contrast between the light at the bottom of the screen and the darkness at the top.