Questionnaire results

I handed out my questionnaire to twenty members of my target audience to get their feedback on my ideas and help me make some descisions about my short film. The anwers given will help me tailor my film to appeal to the target audience and will also help me produce something fit for purpose.  I also plan to get together a focus group to elaborate on some ideas and get some in depth feedback for certain aspects of my short film. 

Question 1&2: Age and Gender

Everyone that did my survey was aged 16-19. This is an age group that fits within my target audience. It was really easy to get feedback as I have access to this group of people. This, along with the answers to the following questions, has allowed me insight into if this age group is the correct one for me to target. If a majority of the people questioned didn't like the idea I would know that perhaps I shouldn't be aiming fo rthis target audience.

I made sure to get an equal number of both males and females to fill out my questionnaire in order to get an accurate representation of my proposed target audience. I wanted to see if they reacted differently to the premise of my short film. As I predicted, they did: both genders generally liked the idea but for different reasons. 

Males tended to like the parody aspect whilst females liked the romantic aspect. But this will become clearer in the next question.

Question 3: What are your initial thoughts? Does this appeal to you?

First of all I wanted to have a starting point of opinion so I could just straight away if this person was interested in the premise. I see no point in listening to the rest of the questionnaire if the person filling it out doesn't care.

The genreal response was very positive:

"Sounds very cute and funny"

"I love these sort of storyilines, I would watch it."

One male audience member wrote this: "The use of thoughts in his head to start off his daydream is really good. The use of showing the relationship is good aswell. Personally no, but i'm a 17 year old guy who likes action and adventure but I would sure have a look considering it's a spoof."

This is a perfect example of how I am targeting the male market. Stereotypically rom-coms are aimed at and appeal to females but the parody aspect was how I wanted to target the male market aswell. I love the idea of maybe a man who has had to watch romantic comedies with his girlfriend and has a distain for them to see something that completely pokes fun at the genre.

Question 4: Rate these situations in order of how much you would like to see them in the film. 1 is high, 5 is low. (each situation would be a parody of a real rom com)

This will help me prioritise the featuring of the scenarios in my film so if I don't have time for them all I know which to include. I predicted that sitting on the sofa watching a film would be very popular and walking out of the cinema would be least popular. Here are the popularity standings.  

The characters having a picnic proved most popular and I agree that is would be a good thing to include so I will but this at the top of the metaphorical list. As I predicted walking out of the cinema wasn't popular. I initially wanted to have the couple in the cinema watching a film but I wouldn't be able to do this as cinemas are really strict about filming in the theatres for copyright reasons. Watching a film on the sofa proved less popular overall than I thought but I really like this scenario, so I think I will include it anyway despite the audience feedback. However it wasn't a widely disliked idea so I don't think it will matter to the members of the audience that didn't like the sound of it, when they see it in the film I think they may change their opinion. 

Question 5: What other things do you associate with romantic comedies?

This is a further attempt to find out more about the romantic comedy genre, or more specifically what people think of the genre. I wanted to know what people associate with rom-coms incase they had a really good association that could form an idea that I didn't think of.

Here are some of the best responses:

"Icecream drips on clothes" - I like this idea of having an icecream themed mishap. I would like to extend this though, rather than just having it dripping on clothes. I was thinking more the two characters having an icecream cone each, offering a taste to the other person then touching their nose with it. This would be followed by the other chacter absouloutly covenring the others face in icecream.

"A lovely kissing scene" - I would deffinately like to include a kissing scene but I have to take my actors into consideration. I'm not sure they would be happy to do this. However I see no reason why they couldn't go in for a kiss then the camera pans upwards, so the kiss is implied rather than shown on screen.

"Tandem bikes" - I love this idea, it is fantastic. Its a cliché I completely overlooked. I would like to include a tandem bike ride in my short film, it just comes down to sourcing a tandem bike which may prove a problem. But that doesn't meen I won't try to find one.

There were some responses that, yes I do associate with romantic comedies, but aren't right for my film. Several people sugested including break ups and arguments. I can identify these are the type of things featured in rom coms but the point of my characters day dream is that he is imagining his idea of a perfect relationship. I don't think his idea would include him and his girlfriend falling out. So I understand these comments but have chosen to ignore them.

Question 6: Which of these titles do you think is best?

I presented the people questioned with three choices that are all possible title for my film. I was particularly excited to get in th eresults of this one as I was completely stuck on which one to choose. Here are the result.

'One Fine Coffee Break' was a clear winner with twelve votes to four. I like this one as it is a take on the title of the rom-com 'One fine day'. I was suprised to see that more people didn't go for 'What could be' I thought this was really clever and fitting as the main chracter is imagining what could be if he would go over and talk to the girl. 'Coffee Shop Daydream' was just my work in progress title so I wasn't surprised to see the low number of votes for that one. This was a particularly useful question for me as it has helped me make a hard decision. The title of my short film will be 'One Fine Coffee Break'.

Question 7: What clothes should the main character wear?

 How the characters are represented is a vital part of the mis-en-scene of the film.What clothes he wears is important as it creates the initial opinion the audience has on him. I envisaged him wearing casual but smart-ish clothes like an unbuttoned shirt with a top underneath and a pair of jeans. This is what my audince suggested. Many of the responses were similar to each other so I have grouped them:

I was pleased to see the audience genreally agrees with me. Concluding from this data the main character will be wearing casual clothes - dark jeans, an unbuttoned shirt with maybe plain t-shirt underneath. That way its still kind of smart but still very casual at the same time. 

Question 8: What type of instruments would you expect to hear during the day dream?

Again I listed several options in order to get a basic idea of what I should be aiming for when  thinking about a soundtrack for this piece. I know I want the music during the daydream to be quite a child-like tune but I had no idea really on which type of instruments.

 

 The favourites are the piano and acoustic guitar. I will follow this advice and use these instruments when creating or choosing my music. Both the piano and guitar have the potential to make a simple yet effective tune for my film. However I feel this will be my biggest task as it is the aspect I am least confident with.

Question 9: Should there be music playing all the time or just during the daydream?

Ive allways had a clear idea that I want simple, airy music to play with the daydream sequence to highlight the fact it isn't reality. However I wasn't sure if I needed music throughout. Asking the target audience helped me decide:

 

70% of people thought I should only have music playing during the daydream. I agree with this whole heartedly but it is somewhat influenced question 11. If there is no dialouge I think music would be needed throughout to help convey the emotions of the characters, but if there is dialouge the characters speech can do this on its own.

Question 10: At the ending, should the other male character be someone the girl already knows or a stranger like the main character?

My original idea was to have the girls boyfriend come in and give her a quick kiss, but whilst developing the idea I thought it might be better to make it a stranger. My thinking behind this is that then both male characters are in the same situation and it means that in daydreaming he wasted the time he should have spent talking to the girl. If he hadn't of been daydreaming the other male wouldn't have got there first. However if she already had a boyfriend his dreaming was futile as there was no chance of any of it coming true.  

'A stranger' narrowly beat 'Someone she knows' as the top result. The closeness of the results suggests to me that it doesn't really matter to the audience who beats the main character to the post and I should maybe focus on the characters reaction to the situation. Because of the deeper conotations outlined above I will make the character a stranger to her but because of questionnaire results I will try to focus more on the main characters reaction to being to slow.

Question 11: Would it be better in your opinion to have the guys thoughts vocalised or to keep the film dialouge free?

As I mentioned in question 9 with desicion to have music only during the daydream will depend on the result of this question. If speech is present the audience will be able to derive meaning from the tone, pace and pitch of the characters voice and thus music will not be vital. However, if no dialouge is present the intended meaning and emotions may become lost.

The majority of people questioned thought that having no dialouge would be a better option. However, I have to disagree. This is because my film is meant to be entertaining and funny, the dialouge is a perfect oppertunity to add to the humour of the film. For example as it is his inner monolouge it is only what he is thinking, not saying out loud, so the other characters can't hear it (non-diegetic). This means what the character says (or rather, doesn't say) can be totally outragous or things that many people think but would never say out loud. So, in conclusion I will not be following the audiences advice on this question.

Question 12: How could the woman appear mysterious or intriuging?
Some of the answers to this question again similar to question 5, they are really good ideas but some don't fit with my short film.

"She could look really sad to make the audience wonder why" - This would need an explination further along the narrative - this isn't what my film is about. 

Others, however, were fantastic!:

"She could be reading a book" - I had thought about this and it's something I really like. She could be reading a book but the main character can't see what it is. He could then wonder what book it is in his mind, hoping it's something good. She could then lift up the book to turn the page and he see's the cover - delighted to see it's a good book (of which I have not yet decided) and he continues thinking about her leading on to the daydream. 






This was a really useful exercise for me and I enjoyed getting feedback on my idea. I'm never really certain about an idea until I get other peoples opinions on it. I will make some changes as stated above and no doubt I will keep making changes here and there throughout the process. I plan to do a focus group in the near future giving me some in depth ideas about my film from my audience.