Our Questionnaire Feedback

 

Our Questionnaire Feedback

 

We asked 15 students aged 17-23  The following questions to factor in what to include in our thriller opening. Each student we asked regularly watches films especially within the thriller genre.

 

1.     What is your favourite sub-genre of thriller?

2.     What is your favourite psychological thriller and why?

The most frequent responses from this question were:

 

Ø Shutter Island

Ø Silence of the Lambs

 

However other answers included:

 

Ø Seven

Ø The Machinist

 

 

3.     How do you hear about new thrillers?

 

4.     What is your favourite poster for a thriller and why?

 

The most common response for this question was ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. The explanation for this question was “Because it is simple and explains the entire film in one line… and looks very cool”.

 

Another response was ‘Kill Bill’. This response was because “the poster explains the plot in a quirky manner”.

 

 

5.     What is your favourite trailer for a thriller and why?

 

The most popular trailer for a film in the questionnaire has been 2013’s Gravity. One response said that ‘this trailer has the most impressive visuals I’ve ever seen and that was only a two minute trailer’

 

6.     What do you expect to see in a Psychological Thriller?

 

There was no set answer for this question and the responses varied from the participants but some key points that were raised were as follows:

 

‘Great plot and a twist at the end’

‘Interesting characters that betray the audiences trust’

‘Props that create suspense throughout the film’

 

7.     Do these Thrillers grab your attention on social media?

 

 

 

8.     What is the worst thriller you have seen and why?

 

There was no clear standout for this question. However some key points were for the same reasons i.e.

 

Ø Paranormal Activity: This film is completely fake and gives no compelling story to its audience

Ø Snakes on a Plane: Too silly to be taken seriously in the ‘thriller genre’.

 

9.     What do directors get wrong when shooting thrillers?

 

10. What characters appeal to you and why?

 

This question allowed us to find out how people react to certain characters:

 

‘A likeable hero, but with a history that will haunt them in the film’

‘A bad guy, one that has no limits to how evil they can be’

‘The main character needs to be mysterious. This keeps us guessing as to their true nature’.

 

11.                       What key things grab your attention in Thrillers?

12.                       What types of props do you expect to see in thrillers?

 

The most common answer for this question was ‘Guns’, although ‘Knives’ and ‘Masks’ were also used in the list.

 

 

13.                       Do you feel that black and white films have more of an effect in the thriller genre?

 

 

14.                       Do your personal interests affect the films you watch?

 

15.                       If so, then how?

 

The responses varied from positive to negative:

 

‘I massively like the supernatural world and this makes me prefer supernatural thrillers’.

 

‘My personal interest is historic events and this makes me more interested in espionage thrillers’.

 

‘I like all kinds of things, none of these have an effect on what I watch however’.

 

What we will do with the feedback

After studying the results from our questionnaire we have an idea of what we would like to base our thriller on. The most popular response from our target audience was to focus our storyline around a psychological thriller theme. to achieve this we well look further into psychological thrillers by watching the openings to a few, as research. in another area of the questionnaire we covered setting, in the planning for our thriller we will have to consider very carefully where we set our main action, as some people responded in the questionnaire saying they thought setting was one of the key aspects the directors got wrong.
With characters the character was preferred  to be likable. However with such a short amount of time (2 minutes) we wont have enough time for the audience to really get to know the main characters.We were planning to film our production in colour and then edit it so it would become black and white. However we decided against that idea after we read that the responses suggested we should keep the thriller in colour.