Questionnaire Analysis

Questionnaire Result Analysis

We created a questionnaire to hand out in order to find out what different people find to be important in thriller openings. We included questions about how often people watch films, what sub-genre of thriller they prefer, what props they find to build tension, etc. The three of us each had ten of the questionnaires to hand out for a range of people to fill in. From looking at the results, we have learned what we think would be suitable to use in our thriller in order to create a suspenseful and professional opening.

We ensured that we gave the questionnaires to a range of ages and to both genders in order to understand what different target audiences expect from a thriller. Despite asking a range of people, we  did give questionnaires to mostly people from between 10-20, because this is the age group that we spend the most time with. We took advantage of having more results for this age group by starting to consider using this as our target audience. We thought this was helpful because teenagers tend to be prime viewers of thriller films. We think that this may be because after being a child and watching childish movies, they want to mature and see those that are more shocking, and tense- the thriller genre is right for this. Even though we asked people who seldom watch films to people who watch them almost daily, they were mostly people that watched films often. This would give us more valuable results as they are more likely to be sure of what they believe works or does not work in thriller openings.

The first question we asked -to do with thriller films- was ‘What is your favourite thriller sub-genre?’. It was a closed ended question, and we gave the interviewees a large choice of thriller sub-genres to choose from, also giving an ‘Other’ box, in case we had not included their favourite. The most popular choice was ‘Psychological’, especially among teenagers, which is convenient for us as we now know what is appealing for our target audience. Because of this, we plan to create a psychological thriller opening. Other popular responses were ‘Crime’ and ‘Religion’, so we will therefore try to include aspects from these genres in our movie. This will work as these three sub-genres have similarities. For example, they are related with the mind and death/murder.

For the next two questions we asked them to give reasons why their chosen sub-genre was their favourite, and to name their favourite of this sub-genre. The reasons people liked psychological were: ‘I love the tension of a psychological’; ‘they have a lot of plot twists making it impossible to guess the ending’ and ‘I find them exciting because they are eerie to watch’. From this, we learnt some aspects that would be important to include. For example, we could include a plot twist which in turn would create tension, like the death of who we think is the main character.  Eeriness is of obvious importance, and making the opening eerie will be one of our primary goals.  

The next question was about what techniques are best to create tension. We gave suggestions, and the individuals would tick which ones they think were most important. The three options to get the most ticks were: ‘Little/no dialogue’, ‘Tense music’ and ‘One/two main characters’. These options all work together very well; by having very little dialogue the tense music will be focused on more. Also, having fewer characters makes sense because if there are only one or two people, there won’t be much talking.

‘What gender do you expect the antagonist to be in a thriller film?’ and ‘What gender do you expect the protagonist to be in a thriller film?’  were our next two questions. We gave the option ‘Doesn’t concern me’ as well as ‘Male’ and ‘Female’. For both questions, the majority of people said that they weren’t concerned by the gender of these characters. After finding this we chose to use a female as the protagonist, because it is a popular convention of thrillers to have a female victim. We have also decided that the gender of the antagonist does not have to be revealed in the opening of the thriller, because this is something that would be revealed later on. It would build tension to keep the identity of the villain a secret. 

The last question in our survey was ‘Which props do you think will help to create tension in the opening of a thriller?’ The three most popular options were: ‘Gun’, ‘Victorian Doll’ and ‘Disturbing images’. The gun and disturbing images will work well together, because shooting someone can create a disturbing image; blood and/or a dead body. The Victorian doll was an idea that we thought would bring a strange atmosphere because it is an old-fashioned object. It is quite sinister, because it is supposed to be a pleasant toy for children to play with, but we plan to give it a darker undertone by implying that it could be responsible for the death of a character.