Survey analysis

In my survey questions I asked questions I believe will help me develop my main task.
This market research has helped me gain information about my target audience and
how they believe a short film should be made and what makes a good short film. I
asked questions that were specific to short film as I believe short film has a lot more
to achieve in a lot shorter time period than a long film does. Some of the questions
include length of opening title, the gender of the protagonists and the genre of the
film. The overall purpose of this survey was for to be able to build a backbone on
which I could expand on to make my short film.

The first question I asked what length opening
title sequence the short film should have, if any.
Typically a standard film has a 35 second
opening title sequence, however I am filming a
short film. The majority of people said that they
would rather see a short opening title sequence
than a long. Short had a total of 87%, in
comparison to long 13%, due to the vast
difference in the vote I feel in order to make a
successful short film that I should keep the title
to around 7 seconds as from the answers provided my target audience (all between
15-22). I went on to ask why the majority chose
to see a long title sequence. From the answers it
was clear to me that the audience wanted the
opening sequence to set the mood and they felt
anything longer than 10 seconds would be
overkill. The other reasons why the short films
title should be kept short were because it allows
more time for the narrative and because often
long introductions could be considered long and
tedious.
The results from this question in the survey tell
me that a vast majority believe that only a short amount of time is needed for the
survey. I will take this on board and very likely incorporate it into my final product
due to the frequency of respondents that chose the short opening sequence.




The second question I asked was whether the audience believe a short story is best
told through symbolism or dialogue. From
previous research it is clear that the majority
of short films are told solely through
symbolism or dialogue, both proving equally
successful. Asking this question gave me a
look in on which one my target audience
believed would be the favoured one to
witness. As is made clear from the chart the
majority (75% of respondents) chose
dialogue, compared to symbolism. Short
films such as Love Field rely on symbolism
to create the mixed messages in the piece
through music, mise-en-scene, editing and
deceptive shots give the story line, conversely the short film Elefante relies on
dialogue in the form of
narration to tell the story.
The reason most chose
dialogue is because
symbolism can give lots of
mixed messages that are
open to interpretation
which can lead to the
oppositional reading.



This research question has confirmed my intentions
of making a Sci-fi short. It is clear from the chart that
Sci-fi is the genre my target audience would prefer to
watch, 62.5% of the voters would prefer to watch a
short film over any other genre of film. The only other
two genres selected were romance and war, receiving
just 3 votes between them. Due to the significance in
results I will apply my respondents opinion into my
final piece and make it a Sci-fi.


Following on from the previous question,
as the majority chose to see a Sci-fi it was
expected that the respondents would
select somewhere in the future. The
majority selected near future compared
to distant future, by around 60% more.
Again the data provided is significant,
leading to me to place my short film in
the near future.



A female protagonist was selected by most
of those who responded, this was
surprising because 81% of those who
answered were males. Typically, in Sci-fi
films male act as the protagonist.
Therefore these responses give me the
opportunity to break common codes and
conventions.