Market Research

Within the last week, I carried out a film questionaire on twenty people. 

I sent out fifteen questions via Facebook, to find out if there was a general relationship between their age, their favourite film genre and the essentials they wanted to see in any film.

These were my questions:

1. Male/Female?
2. Age?
3. Favourite movie genre?
4. How often do you watch films?
5. Least favourite movie genre?
6. Do the actors in a film influence you to watch a film?
7. Which age certificate do you mostly watch?
8. Name three elements you think a film must ideally contain:
9. Where do you tend to watch most films?
10. Does the advertisement of a film matter before you watch it?
11. How important is the first 2 minutes of a film to you?
12. Who do you watch films with?
13. What is your favourite film?
14. Why is it your favourite film?
15. If you could go behind the scenes of any film, which would it be?

I tried to make my choices in people to ask as balanced as possible, using 10 girls and 10 boys - ages ranging from 12 - 20. 

The comedy, horror and action genres were the most frequent answers I received when asking the boys about which favourite movie genre they preferred. The girl's general feed back was comedy, romance and thrillers.Comedy gained the most popularity with both the genders - particularly as humour was one of everyone's three elements which a film must ideally contain. 

The majority of girls listed Sci-Fi as their least preferred movie genre, whilst many of the boys revealed their greatest fear - putting horror films at the top of theres! 

Movies with the film classification of a 15 were the most common among my interviewees - even the younger ones who had not even turned 15 yet! It became apparent as to why this is after asking the next question. Only 5 out of the 20 people I asked tend to watch films at the cinema (being the older teenagers), whereas, the young ones who may not be served a '15' ticket would just watch the film at home by themselves or with friends. 

All of the interviewees agreed that the advertisement of a film is extremely important and determines whether or not they should see it or not. Specifically mentioning how the trailer of the film has great effect on this. 

Whilst all the girls stated the 2 minutes of the film as being highly significant, as it is the underlying part of the film that decides whether or not to continue watching or simply switch off... half of the boys agreed whilst the other half said they don't usually even notice the first 2 minutes. 

There was a great range of answers when asked about their favourite films:

The favourites being - Superbad, Hangover, Saw 3, Sex + the City, Harry Potter, Twilight series, Clash of the Titans, Shaun of the Dead. The current favourite trends for movies seem to be comedies - as films such as, the Hangover and Superbag. The reasons behind this were given that they have had great publicity and remain famous comedy classics despite no longer being on at the cinema anymore. The Twilight Saga also seemed to internet the girls I interviewed, as they explained how the cast of these films effected their choices - Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner being the main reason.


The actors also controlled the answer to the last question I asked my interviewees, as they answered considering the actors they would love to be behind the scenes with - again, the Twilight Saga was mentioned in a couple, including 17 Again. The more cleverly put together films were the majority of most answers - such as Lord of the Rings, Avator, Harry Potter and Charlie + the Chocolate Factory.

After carrying out my Market Research, I was able to come to a conclusion about the levels of popularity between various genre and what effects this. In relation to our film opening - despite, the most popular film genre being of humourous nature, the horror/thriller genre was also rated highly. It has also become apparent that the first two minutes are crucial to a film, which is why we have to ensure our film opening contains all the essential elements, its audience is looking out for.