Short Film Audience Survey Results Analysis

The tables and graphs below display the statistics in a variety of different formats, for the responses to my quantitative audience research survey. The pie charts and bar graphs make it easier to visualise the distribution of the votes across each answer selection, whilst the data tables give more detailed information on the percentage of each chosen answer. Overall, 25 people took my survey.

Question 1- What age range do you fall into?

The majority of my survey participants said that they were 16 to 24 years old. The next most popular age range was 35 to 44. This suggests that my main target audience is young adults.

Question 2- What is your gender?

Most of the participants were female. Only 20% were male. This might suggest that I might be aiming my media product to a predominantly female audience.

Question 3- What is your ethnicity?

The large majority of my target audience have described themselves as white/Caucasian. As an ethnic majority group in the UK, this is unsurprising. This might suggest that my audience would relate less to a short film with issues surrounding race and discrimination.

Question 4- What is the highest qualification you have achieved?

Most people who completed this survey have achieved at least an AS level. Considering the main age group is 16 to 24, it might also suggest that they are still in education and hope to attain A levels or further. This suggests that my audience are fairly educated and intellectual.

Question 5- Where do you live?

Most of the participants live in and around Banstead, and very few live outside of Surrey. This might suggest that my target audience is local.

Question 6- What is your preferred social media?

The survey participants chose Facebook and Instagram together as their most preferred social media, followed closely by Twitter. These three social media platforms may be where I can find my target audience most successfully. Those who selected 'other' all put snapchat as their preferred social media.

Question 7- To what extent would you say you were film literate?

Most of the participants would call themselves somewhat film literate, if not more so. This suggests that I will be able to employ technical codes to create macro meaning to be inferred.

Question 8- Have you ever watched a short film?

Only two participants said that they have never watched a short film. This means that my target audience are familiar with the short form and will understand my final media product.

Question 9- What is your preferred genre of short?

The majority of participants said that comedy was their favourite genre of short was comedy, followed by social realism. This has given me an idea of the type of genre of short film that would be best received by my target audience.

Question 10- How many short films do you watch each month?

Most of my target audience watch 1-3 short films every month. This might suggest they only watch the well known ones that go 'viral'. However, it is not completely unlikely that they'll see my finished media product.

Question 11- Which service do you use most frequently?

  

The large majority of participants chose YouTube as their preferred media consumption platform. This might suggest that my target audience are better reached on YouTube compared to Vimeo, for example.

Question 12- What social groups do you prefer to see represented in media texts?

The most popular answer from each social type was: young adult, female, white/ethnic minority, LGBT, working class, and disabled. This suggests that my target audience agrees with the social realism convention of representing those that are commonly underrepresented in regular media texts.

Question 13- What issues do you like to see being represented in media texts?

The most popular answer for this question was crime, followed by sexuality, followed by discrimination and gender. This gives me a good idea of what my target audience is looking for in a short film.

To Conclude:

Overall, my target audience is fairly educated and intellectual inside and outside of the film industry. It is comprised of mainly young adults aged 16-24, whom live locally to Banstead. It is mostly white females that are likely to use either Facebook, Instagram or Twitter as their favoured social media. They sometimes watch short films and look for minority social groups being represented, as well as issues that include crime, sexuality, and discrimination.

To compare my predictions with the actual responses:

• the majority of responses suggest that my target audience have completed AS levels or higher
• most do fall into the 16 to 24 age group
• most also do prefer to use Facebook or Twitter 
• the majority of my target audience also prefer Instagram
• most of the participants would like to see young adults being represented in media texts
• the majority of responses do imply that my target audience is somewhat to completely film literate