Results from market research

Here are the results of the questionnaire we recently gave out to our target audience.

The first question we asked was, ‘What type of films do you like?’ The most common answer from the girls was romantic comedy as 7/15 people picked this option. This is a fantastic result because the genre we wanted to use for our teaser trailer was romantic comedy. Therefore our teaser trailer is more likely to be a success within our target audience as they will be attracted by the genre. 4/15 girls picked the genre comedy; therefore our teaser trailer will still be viewed by many as people will be interested by the comedy aspects. The most common answer from the boys was comedy as 9/15 people picked this option. This is a good result because boys may also be interested in the teaser trailer as it will have comedy aspects in it; therefore our trailer is more likely to be popular.

The second question we asked was, ‘Do you like a film that keeps you guessing?’ 14/15 girls picked yes and all 15 boys picked yes. We have chosen to ignore the anomaly answer as it is not in context with the rest of the results. As a result we will make sure that our teaser trailer does not give away a huge amount of detail about the film because we want to keep our audience guessing.

The following question was, ‘what type of ending do you prefer?’ 14/15 girls chose a happy ending whilst 9/15 boys chose a sad ending. Once again we will ignore our anomaly answer from the girls as it out of context. As we are aiming our teaser trailer at females we have decided to create a happy ending to fulfil our target audience’s expectations. The happy ending will also satisfy some males; therefore our trailer is able to reach to other audiences.
The next question was, ‘Does the film have to have big named stars in it to make you want to watch it?’ 8/15 girls said no and 12/15 boys said no. As most people agree that the film does not need big named stars to attract attention we will not rely on it However from research of teaser trailers, the actors are often mentioned by the narrator so in order to make our trailer realistic we will mention our lead actors.

The last question we asked is as follows, ‘A teaser trailer lasts between 30 seconds- 1 minute long. What would you expect to see within this amount of time?’ The main options that were picked were, ‘get a gist of the storyline,’ ‘made clear what the genre is,’ ‘hear a familiar soundtrack,’ ‘See the institution logo’ and ‘have a narrator.’ Therefore we will make sure that our teaser trailer clearly shows the romantic and comedy aspects of the film. The institution logo that we will use is New Line Cinema because from previous research we found that most of the romantic comedies come from that institution. We are going to include a male narrator in our teaser trailer as in most teaser trailers a male often narrates. However from one of our results we have encountered a problem which is that many people chose that they enjoy hearing a familiar soundtrack. This is a problem because our coursework entails that we have to create a soundtrack or use an unlicensed one, therefore our teaser trailer will not have a familiar soundtrack. However we don’t feel this will be a problem as our audience will be concentrating more on what is happening on the screen.

In conclusion after analysing our questionnaire I feel it has helped me a great deal in understanding what our audience wants to see. The questionnaire made me realise that some of the things I thought was necessary to have in a teaser trailer is actually not needed. For instance I thought that we should include credits at the end of the trailer, however only 2/30 people agreed, therefore we will not need to add credits.

Emma :)