Questionnaire results and evaluation

We have had 14 people complete our questionnaire and we have recorded these results and transferred them into graphs. Gareth and I have discussed these results and evaluated them, hopefully using the information we have gained to help us advance and improve our film trailer.
When we created the questionnare, we decided to let the participants answer the questions in their own manner. Although this meant it was more difficult to transfer our data into graphs, we felt that if the participants said exactly what they wanted to say then the data would be more reliable than if we restricted their answers.

This Pie Chart shows the percentage of each age group who completed our questionnaire. This was an important question for us because if we were going to identify a specific genre from this questionnaire, we wanted to know exactly which majority of age group we would be targeting.

We may have a biased result due to the fact that over half of our participants were within the 15-20 age group, but as we fall under that age category ourselves, we felt that this was the age group we were in a position to understand best and therefore we wanted the most amount of data from that particular age group.

This graph suggests to us that other results in our questionnaire may be biased towards the male gender. This may have been due to the fact that as we work in a boy's school, there are many more males that we know that we can ask to take part in our questionnaire.

As Gareth and myself are also males, we feel we are suited to producing a trailer that is more target-focused on other males, as we have a greater understanding of what other males may like. Therefore, although our data is biased towards males, it can help us target the right audience whilst also opening our demographic to both genders.

This graph shows our recorded answers for our participants favourite genre. The majority of participants enjoyed comedy films the most, which was fortunate as we have already developed some ideas for a comedy film. As the second most favourite, horror conventions may be something we would like to include in our trailer (similarly to Shaun of the Dead).

The graph shows that after entertainment, the audience values excitement highly, as the three other genres are generally for high tension films. This suggests to us that whilst we may want to focus on comedy conventions in our trailer, we should keep in mind that the audience is still looking for some action scenes to keep them on the edge of their seat.

Favourite Movie and reasons why

-Anchorman x4 - Funny

-Blades of Glory x2 - Good actors/Funny

-Inception x3- Storyline

-Saw x2- Storyline

-Kick-ass x3- Action/comedy mix

We decided not to put the results of this questionnaire into graph form as there could have been a large variety of answers from multiple different genres. However, one trend that this graph shows is that our participants enjoy comedy films that star Will Ferrel. He currently stars in the chart-topping 'The other guys' which also suggests his comedy is recent and not outdated. We will therefore be studying his comedy films to see exactly what it is that makes him so popular and try to incorporate this into our own trailer.

Six of our participants reasons for their favourite films was because they were funny. This reinforces the popularity of the comedy genre and demonstrates what specifically makes the films popular. The stroyline was another important point that our participants stated, but as we are only making a trailer and not the whole film, we shouldn't have to put as much thought into the storyline as we would if we were making the whole film. 

Favourite part of a Film

-Humour x6

-Twist x3

-Gore x2

-Action x3

The result of this question once again shows us that comedy is currently a very popular genre. Interestingly, three people told us that they enjoyed a plot twist most about a film. This made us think about possible twist or unexpected occurances in the comedy genre. The fact that there were three answers for gore once again made us think about Shaun of the dead and how horror elements and conventions can be included in what is mainly a comedy film.

Camera Loan Inquiries and Actor request

Gareth emailed our media teacher Mr. Aherne on his and my behalf, to ask whether or not there would be problems with loaning the camera during the holidays. We also asked whether he would be able to perform the small part of the chief inspector. We asked him because we wanted the chief inspector to look as though they had authority, and had rose through the ranks, and had gained intelligence through experience. This would have been difficult to pull off if the chief was our age as they would not exude as much natural authourity.

This was the email that Gareth sent on our behalf:

This was his reply:

The reply was great for us as it means that with the camera and another actor organised for the half term, we are now another step closer to being ready to start filming.

Final Scene Choices

Gareth and I have been exchanging emails in order to finalise our choices for which ideas will be a part of our trailer. The final ideas we have decided upon are:

1) Handbag Scene

2) Burgler Scene

3) Chief Scene

4) Disguise scene

5) Car slide scene

Back-up scene: Scooter scene

These are our selected scenes that we will be including in our film and therefore we are now in a suitable position to start our filming schedule and organising issues such as actor timetables, props, clothes, locations, etc.

The E-mails discussing our choices are as follows:

Brainstorm and Flow Chart

This brainstorm was created to aid me and my partner Gareth in understanding exactly what we need to be thinking about throughout our film making process.

This flow chart summarizes everything that we need to do, like the brainstrom, but in a particular order. This will help us to be organised and will help us to realise exactly what we need to do and when.

Comedy Film Research - Forms and Conventions

As we have now decided to do a comedy trailer, we have started looking at various comedy trailers, such as hot fuzz, to better understand the generic qualities involved in showcasing a comedy film.

We first looked at Hot Fuzz as it is our inspiration for our film and is a good example of a film that will be roughly similar to ours. We are also both big fans of this film and therefore believe if our film has similar qualities we should be well prepared to produce it. Something we really enjoyed and thought was clever was the close up 'eyes shot' (4-5 seconds in), as it is used to build up tension, but what we really liked was that it demonstrated the two characters personalities. We think we could use this type of shot for comedic effect so we could build up tension to make a scene even funnier.
We also liked how at the end of the trailer (33-45 seconds), after the name of the film appeared on the screen, another small funny clip was shown to leave the viewer laughing and hopefully associate the funniness of the clip with the name of the film that appeared.

The 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop' Trailer has many examples of scenes which are unexpectedly funny to the viewer, such as when at the start of the trailer, the camera angles and setting suggest an area where physical fitness is taken very seriously, which makes it funnier for the viewer when you see the unfit man trying to compete with the others (11-15 seconds). Another example of this is at 1.43-1.56, when after a variety of action scenes, you see the policeman try to slide around a pillar dramatically. Because the trailer built up tension from all of the action scenes, it made it even funnier when the star fails.
We wanted to integrate this idea into our film trailer and have decided to use it at the end during the 'car slide' scene. If we have a variety of action scenes follwed by the thief performing the car slide, then hopefully it will be funny when the actor fails the following slide.

Something that I have noticed from both of these trailers is how important camera angles are when demonstrating something funny. If the camera angle changes when the joke happens it can draw the viewer towards it. If the camera angle does not change, it becomes less obvious something out of the ordinary has happened.

The beggining of Anchorman builds tension before making the teleprompter joke(2-26 seconds),  much like the beginning scene of Paul Blart. However, the Anchorman trailer spends around 30 seconds introducing the main character, rather than quickly showing him in the first 5-10 seconds. This trailer also shows the jokes of the film while at the same time showing the storyline, which differs from the other trailers who tend to intersperse the storyline scenes with joke scenes.