Hypothesis for Questionnaire

For our questionnaire the group decided that it needed to be specific and bold if it was going to be any real use to us. We decided to build up a hypothesis of precisely what people we would ask. People outside of media studies don’t tend to watch short films, as they are hard to access and don’t have a large demographic to aim at. Because of this we decided to ask people outside of media studies so that we could gain an insight into what casual film watchers would look for or would interest them if short films were more easily available. By finding this out, it would also allow us to market our film better to casual film viewers outside of media and film production with posters and magazine reviews that have to be completed in the ancillary tasks.




From the answers we got it is clear to see that the majority of people would not watch a short film out of choice. If they did watch one, they would prefer to watch it in a cinema before the feature film. The most likely reason for this is that it wouldn’t require any extra effort from the viewer as they are already at the cinema, and also the film would likely be the same genre as the feature film. Most would also be willing to watch a short film on YouTube rather than TV, for example.

Of the thriller sub genres, it would seem that people would rather watch a psychological thriller than a horror. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Horror genre has been worn-out to the extent where these thriller hybrids are becoming somewhat cliché and thereby dull. Therefore, one could argue that the more contemporary thriller enthusiast likes how the human mind works, incorporated within a narrative full of enigmas and twists.

However, from our questionnaire, we also formulated data which suggested that the conventional thriller fan prefers realist narratives opposed to surrealism. This would suggest that although perhaps the simplicity of the horror/thriller may be a dying breed, audiences still enjoy a simple narrative that can keep them engaged, yet perhaps with a twist that will not disrupt the flow of the narrative.

Overall, when looking back upon the early hypothesis devised by Taylor Gladwin, the questionnaire closely reflects his notions above (with some slight variations).However, from this piece of data collection, we can now modify our marketing strategies, and perhaps showcase our short before a feature film of the same genre. The audience would therefore feel inclined to watch our short as it would bear little or no effort to watch. We can also back-track to our storyboard, and slightly tweak the narrative to meet our demographic requirements.