Audience research

1. Who, out of the following do you think best suits a femme fatale?

2. Which location do you think is the most sinister/effective in a thriller? Order them, 1 being the best and 5 being least.

3. Out of the following, which film did you enjoy the most? Tick 3 of your favorite:

Essex Boys

Psycho

Kill Bill

Phone Booth

Clockwork Orange

Third man

The Godfather

Pulp Fiction

Reservoir dogs

Se7en

4. Who, out of the following is the most effective for a villain/murderer?

Would you prefer to see Hollywood actors and actresses in a thriller, or actors and actresses you have never seen before?

Yes?

No?

Why?

the people we asked feel under the age gap of 16 to 19 as we asked fellow students at the school to fill out the answers. This was purely because of convenience but there is a danger that this may make our results bias to the younger audience.

Question 1.

Out of 12 people, 5 of the participants chose Uma Thurman from Kill Bill as the best character, this may be because of the popularity of the film and the fact that it is so recent, so therefore has influenced our age, but also because of the particular character in the film- she shows confidence and control, outsmarting every man she meets. Another 4 out of the 12 chose Scarlett Johansson as the character most suiting to the role of femme fatale. After asking a couple of people why, they said it was because she was attractive, and devious- key generic conventions of a femme fatale so it is not surprising. she is now also a very famous actress and has been widely acclaimed for her talent. 2 people chose the female character from "The Third Man". This is a much older film so it would usually have been surprising that anyone would have seen her before, and therefore chosen her. However, as a majority of the participants were media students it was not so surprising as we have studied the film within class, so this helped give a wider selection of data as media students are more aware of the thriller conventions than other people.

Question 2

Most people selected the first 2 images as the most sinister. The first is a generic convention of a thriller, showing a dark empty and ominous street (especially in the rain) in popular within thriller films. The 2nd image is a conventional setting, however also popular within horror films- the dark shadowy forest is notorious for the perfect place to commit a murder and bury the body with a far less chance of anyone uncovering it. Therefore these are certainly not surprising to be named as the most sinister. The 3rd image was also commented on, some compared it to the setting of the first 'SAW' movie, which does not apply to our research as that is a horror, but interesting how the same idea of a claustrophobic space could be used. Another said they would expect to see this setting in a grimy thriller such as 'Green Street' which is useful to know if we are to change our plot line into a more gangster feel of sub-genre.

Question 3

this question did not show a far more popular film than other, and what was surprising to see was that the older films such as 'The Third Man' is equally as popular to, for example 'Kill Bill'. The older films are however, classics, and many we have studied within class time so therefore broadened our knowledge of many different films. 'The Godfather' and 'Pulp Fiction' were the most popular, by a very little score- both classics and both brilliant films, but this question has not influenced us particulary, we would have to have done this on a much larger scale to see if there was any solid evidence that one was more popular than another.

Question 4

Outstandingly 7 of the 12 volunteers chose the final image. This may be because of the particular shot, and the other 2 images did not capture the villain at his most evil, but after asking some of the particepants a common theme was that "Those are murderers eyes!" after seeing the last image- the connoctions of this white-eyed devil look is certainly the most sinister, ominous and terrifying. The other 2 images show much older men, showing superiority because of there age, size, and this also suggests a wise "all-knowing" feel to them so they would be difficult to outsmart- showing all characters are effective in there own way.

question 5

Most people said they prefer to see well-known actresses and actors in the films they watch because they are familar with them, and like to see them playing different characters. One said "the reason they are famous is because, usually, they are really good at acting so it's bound to be good film if it has them in"- which i think is true to some extent.

On the other hand, others said that they dont mind either way, its the special effects and setting and all the other aspects that are far more important- "if they can act then who cares?"

On a whole the research has been successful and will certainly inform a lot of the decisions we ill make when it comes to filming and editing.