Thriller Survey: Responses

Primary

Thriller Survey Link:

Do Survey here!
Forum that it has been posted on...

http://www.city-data.com/forum/search.php?searchid=357539


Responses (Quantitative)

1) Male or Female?

Male - 5
Female - 6

2) Favourite genre?

Thriller - 3
Action - 2
Comedy - 3
Fantasy - 2
Romance - 0
Musical - 0
Horror - 0
Other - 1

6) Which elements make a good thriller?

Both male and female characters - 1
Suspense - 8
Plot Twist - 7
Action sequences - 2
Other - 1 ("All of the above")

7) Rank the following thrillers in order of preference. (1 = Favourite, 7 = Least Favourite)

Average Rating:
Shutter Island - 1 and 3
Psycho - 1 & 2
Pulp Fiction - 1 & 4
Taken - 5
Leon - 6
Alien - 4
North By Northwest - 7

8) Which of the following thriller directors do you consider you favourite?

Alfred Hitchcock - 3
Roman Polanski - 0
David Fincher - 0
Quentin Tarantino - 2
Christopher Nolan - 2
Martin Scorsese - 0
Steven Spielberg - 4
Other - 0

9) How often do you watch Thriller Films at the cinema?

Never - 3
Occasionally - 8
Often - 0

Responses (Qualitative)

3) What is it about that genre that you like? (if you selected "other" please specify the genre you have in mind)

When asked this question people said features such as 'plot twists', 'mystery', 'magic' and 'the killing'. A few said they like thrillers because they 'holds [your] attention more than the others' and 'keeps you interested throughout the film'. 

4) Do you enjoy thriller films? If so, what is your favourite thriller film?

Two people said their favourite thriller was 'Pulp Fiction'. Others said 'Sixth Sense', 'Ghost', 'The Hills have Eyes', 'Any James Bond/Oceans/Italian Job/Cape Fear/Jaws/Shutter'. 

5) What don't you like about Thriller Films?

When this was asked the frequent answer was 'being too scary', followed by 'too violent' and 'too much gore'. From these responses we can conclude that people don't like thrillers that contain too many elements of a horror film.  


10) What was the last thriller film you saw at the cinema?

When asked, the majority of people named recent releases - such as Taken 2, Hanna, The Village, and Shutter Island. This suggests that the people who took our survey might be frequent cinema goers, and keep up to date with the latest releases. The fact that Taken 2 appears more than once among the responses suggests it was a particularly popular release.

Analysis of Results

Question 1

From the chart above, we can see that it was close between the number of female and male participants. However, there were more females taking part in the survey, which might have had some effect on the overall results. We can assume this because we know from our previous audience research that females and males have varying tastes in films.

Question 2

The above chart shows that, overall, thriller and comedy films were the most popular among our participants. The fact that some of our participants selected thrillers as their favourite genre of film suggests that they are fans of the genre, and will subsequently have some knowledge of thrillers. This means that their answers will benefit us more in our research.

Question 3

The responses to this question imply that the majority of participant enjoy thrillers with suspenseful plots; they enjoy story-lines that keep the audience guessing and hold the audiences interest from the beginning. This is also reflected in the replies to a later question on favourite thriller films, where psychological thrillers have been chosen by some of our participants.

Question 4

Although the answers to this question varied, we could determine that our participants predominantly enjoyed thrillers with a twist in the plot (such as Sixth Sense), as well as films that are very suspenseful (such as Jaws and Taken). There were also a number of films that lean towards horror mentioned in the responses (Shutter and The Hills Have Eyes were two of the responses that contain more elements of horror than thriller), which was a surprise seeing as later in the survey we discovered that most of the participants didn't enjoy thrillers that crossed over into the horror genre.

Question 5

Among the facetious responses we received there were some specific criticisms of modern thriller films - namely that they can become very complicated, sometimes very predictable, occasionally too violent and often appear to lean too much towards horror. A number of people who took part in our survey said that they found some modern thrillers too "scary", and some "too gory", suggesting perhaps that they prefer psychological thrillers as opposed to crime or action thrillers.


Question 6

The majority of people answered this question with "suspense" and "plot twists", reaffirming the ideas above regarding the audience preferring intelligent thriller films, with carefully constructed plots. Only two people suggested that they thought action sequences were an important element of a thriller, again confirming that those who partook in our survey do not enjoy action thrillers as much as psychological ones.

Question 7

Our survey participants ranked, on average, Shutter Island, Pulp Fiction and Psycho as number one. North by Northwest was ranked last - although due to the assumed average age of our participants we presume that this is because they have not yet seen the film, and so ranked films they had seen above it. Despite this, we can gather from the responses that psychological thrillers were generally ranked higher than action thrillers (Shutter Island was ranked higher than Taken), and thrillers that contain elements of horror ranked higher than sci-fi thrillers (Psycho ranked higher on average than Alien).

Question 8

Steven Spielberg was selected as the favourite thriller director of our participants, with Alfred Hitchcock coming in second. It came as a surprise that neither Roman Polanksi nor David Fincher were voted by anyone, despite being established and successful thriller directors. Martin Scorsese was also not selected by anyone, whereas Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan were both voted by two participants each, meaning they both ranked third in the list of favourite directors. The fact that Steven Spielberg was voted favourite by those who completed our survey suggests that they enjoy films that are more family orientated. This could explain why they appear to dislike horror, graphic violence or gritty action in thriller films.

Question 9

73% said they occasionally go to the cinema to see a thriller film, whereas the remaining percentage never go to the cinema to see a thriller film. This means that from our results at least 73% of our responses are reilable because they have some idea on what a thriller film is. This also provides evidence that those people we collected responses from are relevant to what we are trying to find out.         

Question 10

From this question the majority of people had seen more recent thrillers. So we can conclude that they keep up to date with the latest films. Publicity of films via trailers/advertising are a key element on how the population are acknowledged of the newest films.
Conclusion

We can conclude, having analyzed all of our responses, that the majority of our participants prefer thriller films that contain intricate plots, plenty of suspense, little violence, few elements of horror, and are, to some extent, family orientated. However, many of the responses given seemed to contradict one another, which also suggests that peoples preferences where thrillers are concerned depend on specific films and directors.