Audience Feedback: Screenplay Concept

Analysing Audience Research



1) Gender I asked this question to help me understand some of the other responses to later questions, especially when it comes to who would watch this genre of film. A large proportion of the responses came from females (62%), possibly just because women are more willing to take the time to fill out the survey, whereas only 27% were male. We have to keep this in mind when analysing later responses because the main character of my screenplay is male and so may be different to how the majority of the respondents would think.

2) Age Again, this question is to help understand the demographic of the respondents. For this screenplay, I had in mind an audience aged between 15 and 35. In the survey, over 50% of those answering were over 35, so they may have different opinions with some of the themes I hint towards later in the survey. The other three categories combined make up 49% of respondents, which is still a substantial amount within the target audience.

3) Those who Enjoy Spy/Action Films Although I wouldn't necessarily consider my screenplay idea to fit within the genre of spy/action, it is probably the closest, and well recognised, genre to it. A strong 65% of respondents said they enjoyed watching films of this genre which means whichever way you look at the demographics of respondents a majority would enjoy my film as well.

4) When Those Last Watched a Spy/Action Film Out of interest, I wanted to judge roughly how frequently the respondents watched films within the genre of spy/action. 1 in 5 respondents had watched one within the last week, roughly 2 in 5 had watched one in the last month, compared to another 1 in 5 for both the last year and over a year. This means that about 60% of the respondents had seen a spy/action film recently, which is promising, although it may be bias towards the fact that the new spy/action Bond film Spectre had been released within the last month. In the UK, Spectre topped the box office for the first three weeks following its release, which could mean it is unlikely such a high amount of people had recently seen a spy/action film so recently.

5) Those Likely to Watch a New Spy/Action Film Following the speculation of bias regarding the previous question, comes a slight correlation in the data. When asked how likely they were to watch a new spy/action film, 60% gave a positive response of either 'very' or 'maybe'. This suggests that although it could be coincidental with Spectre coming out in the last month, the same amount of people - quite likely to be the same people - would still watch a new film. Although over a quarter of people gave a negative response of 'probably not' or 'never', a majority would probably watch my film.

6) Characteristics of a Protagonist When writing the screenplay, I am unsure about some of the characteristics my protagonist - Dave - should have. I was also keen to find out what people thought were the necessities of such a character. I intentionally added 'quiet', 'geeky' and 'shows weakness' to describe my initial opinions of Dave when coming up with the framework of the screenplay. The most popular responses were 'shows strength', 'uses gadgets' and 'uses guns'. Obviously, I have ruled out using guns in my screenplay because it does not fit in the theatre setting, however I have re-considered some of my protagonist's characteristics. I want to have more an emphasis on gadgets (being wireless microphones for spying), and show Dave as having some physical strength on the lighting rig in addition to his mental weaknesses.

7) Attempted Suicide I asked this question to gauge the necessary sensitivity around the issue of a character attempting suicide on film. The strongest response (44%) was strongly against watching a film which involved attempted suicide, closely followed by 41% of respondents who said it needs to be done tastefully. When combined with those who thought they had seen worse, a majority would be okay to watch this happen in my film. However, it has made it very clear to me how sensitive the issue is and how I need to be very careful when writing the screenplay. On the other hand, there is a correlation in the data where 10 of the 13 respondents who said they wouldn't want to watch it are in the over 35 age category. This helps my case for including it in the film, because these people are not exactly within my target audience.

8) Other Features of a Spy/Action Film I asked this question because I was unsure about putting comedy into the scenario in the screenplay. 40% said they enjoyed comedy as part of a screenplay, which will encourage me to make the film slightly more humorous. I think this will also help take some focus away from the darkness of the attempted suicide. I added other categories as possibly answers to the question simply to not lead the respondents too much towards the idea of comedy. As a result, 33% said 'drama' and - I think surprisingly - 15% said 'fantasy'.

9) Other Films About Lighting Technicians Purely to test the uniqueness of my idea, and potentially give me some inspiration from other films, I asked the respondents if they had watched or heard of another film about a lighting technician. The answer was a clear 100% 'no'. Although this helps my confidence in writing this screenplay because I know it will be unique, it doesn't particularly help me because it is difficult to find other films to research.