Audience Research Questionairre

For our first question we wanted to find out what personality our protagonist should have for our opening sequence. As you can see from our results, the audience felt that he should be highly intelligent with a sinister element about him which is the response that we were hoping to receive. In our opening extract we want to create a protagonist that can do more damage with his mind than his fists. We want him to be three steps ahead of anyone else at all times and always know how any situation will plan out. The costume of a suit will compliment this personality nicely and that is what the majority of our survey audience have chosen as seen in the second graph.

Out of the 12 people who took our survey, 4 said the opening should be set in the early hours of the morning, 4 in the evening and 4 at night. This tells us that the lighting should be quite low key as none of the audience said it should be set in midday. It is quite difficult to film late at night due to lighting issues however we will definitely consider filming the scene in the evening add a mysterious element to the atmosphere.

Our fourth questioned asked 'what gender and age would you expect the main character to be?' and again the option we wanted to get the most votes did. In order for our protagonist to be highly intelligent, they need to be around middle aged so that they have an element of maturity about them. I believe that a male aged between 26-40 would fit this criteria perfectly and so is what we will most likely use.

As you can see from the results of my fifth question, the thriller genre would most likely appeal to men more so than women, but the age would range from 15-40. This means in our thriller opening sequence, me and James will need to incorporate features of the thriller genre that will be appropriate for both 15 and 40 year old viewers. The audience of women didn't get as many votes as the male target audience, however it did get a few votes which means we will have to still try and include elements that will appeal to a female target audience as well.

Our final question asked 'what would be a suitable location for a thriller opening sequence?' and the most popular answer was a highly populated city. Using this setting would create huge amounts of suspense and tension due to there being innocent civilians involved so the audience would fear for their safety as well as the protagonist's. However, we may not be able to use this location because the entire plot of our film is based around kidnapping which would take place in quiet location where no one would be able to see it. It is for this reason why we will probably use a woodland area as one of our locations rather than a highly populated city.