Qualitative Audience Research

For this section of my audience feedback research, i have decided the best way to retrieve qualitative data, was to ask a same of people a set of questions based on a film trailer that i have provided. This allows the sample group to express their opinions instead of choosing from a closed set of answers. I have decided to ask those questions personally to the sample I will be providing and then record and analyse the audience’s answers.

I have chose to use the film trailer 'Saw', this is due to the fact that its genre is a crime, horror and the use of mystery. All three of these genre techniques and categories, I will be hoping to use in my own film trailer. I feel that because this film trailer 'saw' has a genre that links and relates to my film trailer, the qualitative data that I receive from the questions and analysis should relate with information i may need to consider for my own film trailer. Concluding that it will develop my understanding of the types of conventions and techniques used for film trailers with these types of genres.

Below is the film trailer for 'Saw' which i have embedded onto my blog from a horror movie trailer website:

Due to time constraints and the qualitative nature of this audience research I have limited the number of responses to three people, this is because the qualitative feedback is very large and the feedback I have received from the quantitative research has given me a large amount of data that is easily analysed; where as the qualitative data takes a long time to analyse and because of this I believe there is not enough time to collate any more results.

1) What genre/s do you think this film is? Please expand on your answer

2) Do you feel this film trailer was successful or not? Please explain your answer

3) What connotations would you place with the colour of the titles and mood of the trailer; do you feel this reflects the genre of the film?

4) Do the sound effects contribute to the creation of atmosphere and the tension in the film trailer? If yes: how? and does it reflect the genre?

5)  What themes do you think are present in this film trailer? do these themes reflect the genre of the film?

Active Audience Theory:Encoding – Decoding: Active Audience Theory

Encoding-Decoding is an active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience.

• Encoding  - is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers.
• Decoding - is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text

Reception Theory: Active Audience Theory 

Reception theory focuses on the role of the audience in the interpretation of a text, instead of on the text itself. Therefore the theory suggests that audiences play an active role in reading texts, that each person has the ability to interpret the same text differently, and that a text by itself – without a reader – has no specific meaning.

Conclusion

Genre - The use of specific themes is evident to portraying certain genres. In order for me to portray the genre in the film trailer I am going to produce then I need to create a storyline for the film which includes themes that best reflect each genre individually.

Sound Effects- Sound Effects are used to help promote different emotions and feelings upon an audience, therefore sound effects effectively help to produce the needed tone and atmosphere for both a film and a film trailer at key moments. From this I can conclude that I will need to use Sound effects to promote the type of emotions I want the audience to feel during the key moments, enabling the film trailer to be more of a success.

Titles - It is evident that an audience notices the colour of titles used in a film trailer. All colours have specific connotations that an audience link to the genre of the film that they are watching. Therefore it is important that I choose a colour for the titles that best represents the genre I am using.