PRE-PRODUCTION: Audience Preference

I decided to get a better understanding of what people have enjoyed watching and would like to see in the future. Myself and Patria interviewed various different people and created surveys to get a more representative collection of information.

Venetia (left), Anjelee (middle), Komal (right)

Venetia aged nineteen, a college student in South East London. She is studying Psychology, Media, Science and English literature. She enjoys mostly documentary programmes and films.
Anjelee aged nineteen, a university student in South East London. She is studying Psychology. She mostly watches drama and action based movies.
Komal aged nineteen, a university student in South East London. She is studying a LLB in Law. She enjoys watching real-life action films and Indian films.


“Our favourite British film that we have seen would be Kidulthood and the follow up film of Kidulthood, called Adulthood. It really identifies the problems in society and I really connected to the film, I think that everyone growing up knows of a situation in the film that they can relate too.”Charlotte is a nineteen year old college student. She is studying dance, drama and media. She enjoys watching many different dramas’ on TV and goes to the cinema regularly. She involves herself in popular culture and watches popular movies in the cinema. She collects loads of films on DVD and especially collects horrors such as Saw.

Charlotte is a nineteen year old college student. She is studying dance, drama and media. She enjoys watching many different dramas’ on TV and goes to the cinema regularly. She involves herself in popular culture and watches popular movies in the cinema. She collects loads of films on DVD and especially collects horrors such as Saw.

“For me, my favourite types of films are those which
can make me think and draw out emotion from me. I enjoy horrors because they make jump and push me to try and figure out what is going to happen. I also enjoy films which make me feel different types of emotions like the film ‘My sister’s keeper’ I would like to see a film which could develop both idea’s.”

Below is the questionnaire which myself and Patria constructed. We handed this out to twenty people randomly in order to make the questionnaire as representative as possible.

                                                                                            

We asked what gender so we could identify any patterns within gender roles.

We asked for the age type to also identify any specific preferences for different ages, this would help us make a sensible decision on the genre which our film should be.

We needed to know whether we should raise more awareness on what short film is before undertaking our short film task.

We asked how the individual was aware of any institutions which produce short film. This allows us to understand whether the audience take notice of where the film is produced from, this may effect our short film.

Finally, we asked where the audience would like to watch a film and whether they would enjoy a short film more or a long formed film.

Once me and Patria gave this questionnaire out we gathered a greater understanding of what our target audience prefers. We could now create patterns and correlations based on the information which we had gathered. We are aware that we could of made a more representative questionnaire by releasing it to a larger group of people. Below we have created bar graphs and pie charts to show the information we had gathered.

The pie chart above shows what genre the individuals which took the questionnaire preferred. 30% of people preferred the genre Drama, whilst it is closely followed by 25% of them wanting to watch Crime. 5% however preferred another type of genre which was not specified and the least preferred was Action films.
This was extremely interesting as it meant that we did not have to stick to a specific genre we could use two or three different types of genres to fit the needs of our target audience. 

From the bar chart above we can see that music is rated the most successful element in short film with 10 people choosing it, whilst 5 people think it should be acting. The least successful things are voted other and camera angles. This leads us to believe that the audience focus most on the music or have highest hopes for it. Me and Patria also discussed why we think that music was rated highest and camera angles least as we have been studying media for two years we are aware that camera angles and editing is extremely important. We came to the conclusion that music is what the audience notice whereas the editing and camera angles are not focused on as in depth and the audience do not see the before product therefore, have nothing to compare it too.



The results of the questionnaire show that the majority of individuals would prefer to watch a full two hour film, this is because it is the norm. They also believe that you get full gratification from the film whereas they believe you couldn't get that from a short film.
The minority which chose short films chose them because they believe they leave the film open to interpretation and you are left to make up your own mind about the film.




The preferred way of watching a film is noted to be online, this is because it is free, easy to access and convenient although this disregards the fact that it is illegal. This is then followed by television, again it is partially free and with technology you can record and play again whenever you want. Rental stores are the least favourite, because it is more time consuming and you have to give it back in a certain number of days. To many people this is inconvenient when you have alternative options around you.