Sam Warren Media A level: Audience Research Lesson

Today, as a class, we looked at methods in which we can research our target audience and how we can incorporate them into the development of our final product- the film trailer.

Things to consider:

Demographics
Psychographics
Niche vs Mass Audience
Target Audience
Actual Audience
Uses and gratifications

Ways to conduct research

Quantitative-Statistical
Qualitative- opinions, thoughts and ideas

Both these sets of data can be acquired through a questionnaire that has a mix of open and closed questions in order to get the audiences general opinion of how they feel about our genre of film and what we can do to make it more appealing and unique. The questionnaire itself mustn't have leading questions such as "don't you think that..." as we want the audience to say what they think truthfully and not what will suit us as this will force us to make changes to cater the film to our audience making it better. In addition the questions should be straight to the point and not waffle on in order to avoid confusion.

Here is an example of a good questionnaire:

Here is an example of a poor questionnaire:

Another option would be to also do a focus group of around 6-10 people fore 15 minutes in order to hear everyone's views on the questions we ask verbally and to generate more of a discussion amongst our audience. The questions must be open ended in order to get the most out of the groups ideas and we must ensure that there is a clear purpose behind the questions and must:

Determine what's popular
Determine what the audience likes about the genre
Determine where there are gaps in the genre that can be expanded on or what is overused

As a group we came up with some early ideas for questions that we could use in either our focus group or in our questionnaire. These include: