Survey analysis

Analysis of survey results

To get some more research as to what people think does well in this genre as so what other people think we should have included we sent out a survey here is what our responses show:

1.       How old are you?

The first question we asked was for their age. This is so that we could make sure we were getting results from the right sort of market that our film opening would be aimed at. Fortunately the large majority of responses came from our target age boundary as 61% of our results were from people aged 15-17. From this we can say that most of the results will be coming from people we will want to target our film towards.

2.       What age would you expect the actors to be in an urban drama?

For this question 72% of the people that responded said the actors should be 18-24. This would be ideal for our piece as they would be old enough to understand the issue and give an accurate portrayal of the storyline. Unfortunately, the people in our group will have to do the acting as to get someone else in would be difficult so our actors will have to be 16-17 which is not too far off of the target 18 years of age. We had the next largest majority of 16% of the responses saying 15-17 making our actors appropriate and acceptable for our chosen genre.

3.       Where would you expect an urban drama to be located?

There was fairly even numbers for each of the options for this question which were city centre (49%), subways (31%), abandoned buildings (25%), council houses (36%) and city outskirts (26%). The most popular option was city centre with 49% of the votes. This is appropriate for the storyline we have been considering and conforms to the common conventions of a film in this genre. There are also a range of different areas in city centres such as parks, subways, residential areas and many more making it an ideal place for a film opening. Also, there are usually lots of other people in city centres so the city would seem busy. This is also one of the negatives because the people ma get in the way of filming or think there is a fight occurring and disturb the filming process so it could be difficult to film in such a public place.

4.       Urban dramas are usually based around an issue young people are facing in today’s society, which issues are you interested in?

This question also didn’t have one clear answer as each option had a similar number of responses. However, the most popular issues that people were interested in to see in our film opening was drugs with 57% of the people voting for this issue. We are considering using the idea of homelessness which only 38% of the people who responded to our survey voted for, however the idea is original and not seen very often in A level coursework. The lowest number of votes was for the use of prostitution; this is probably because it would be the most inappropriate of all the options.

5.       What props would you like to see to convey these issues?

63 of the 100 responses said that they thought money would be an appropriate prop to use and is also commonly seen in urban dramas so it would be conforming to common conventions. For drugs in general (which we split into pills and needles (injection)) we got a total of 85 people voting for them (51 for pills and 34 for needles) which shows that drugs would fit into the genre we have chosen to do. The next lowest number of votes just above needles is guns, we were not planning on using a gun because we have decided to not put a murder in our piece otherwise it may drift from being an urban drama to being a film from the horror genre. Other options included beer cans which got 46% of the votes and knives with 54% of the votes.

6.       What would you like the characters to look like?

The highest number of votes went to the characters being young and vulnerable (52%) which would fit in with the homelessness concept. The next highest was 31% for attractive and rugged, this would be suitable for another concept but if we decide to use homelessness then only some of the extras would look this way as you don’t tend to see many attractive homeless people. Just below this was drug addict with 10% of the votes, this would be appropriate if we were focusing on the issue of drugs however we are not going to use this so we will not make our characters look like drug addicts. The final two options were tattoos with 7 votes and buzz cuts which nobody voted for. This could be because they are unsure what a buzz cut it or simply the fact that a buzz cut would not be appropriate which is true.

7.       What sound would you expect to hear in an urban drama?

The most popular music genre was rap with 45% of people choosing this option. This would suit an urban drama based on a ‘cool kid’ who listens to rap music. However our piece may be based on homelessness so of the options we included in our survey we would probably use pop music based on a sad theme so that the emotion can be conveyed through the video and sound. Pop only got 7% of the votes. Other options were R&B, Heavy metal/rock, punk and K-Pop which got the lowest number of votes with 3% showing how inappropriate it would be as not many people who would watch this film listen to K-Pop so it would be a risk as they may not like it.

8.       What arrangement of title would you like an urban drama to have?

For this we put in two set options 1-2 words which got 63% of the votes and would be appropriate as it would have a bigger impact than a long title. More than two words, could reveal more about the storyline so people would understand the concept further, this got 33%. We also put in an option for other and asked them to specify. We had one person say words and numbers which could be interesting but would be difficult to link to homelessness. Another person said something like straight outta Compton which could be appropriate however I would rather not use inspiration from such a specific film. A third person suggested horizontal which is a sensible suggestion that can be applied. Finally, someone put bultaoreune which after looking up what that meant will not be appropriate as it is a Korean song so it would be copyright.

9.       Other than the protagonist (main character) what other characters would you want to see?

Our possible options for this question were victim, antagonist (opposes the protagonist), supporting/secondary characters, if supporting/secondary characters how many and pedestrians. The most popular option was a victim, in our piece the protagonist will be the victim because it is based on a homeless girl who doesn’t have anything. The second most popular option with 51% is antagonist which in our case will person who takes the homeless girls one precious item as he is against the victim and steals from her. Pedestrians was the least popular option, we will be using pedestrians to show the loneliness of the homeless girl as she can see happy families and groups of friends contrasting to the girl having only herself for company.

10.   What time of day/lighting would you like to see in the opening for an urban drama?

55% of the votes for this question went to the evening option this would work for other themes such as drugs or alcohol because you could have people in a club drinking or doing a drug deal down a dark alleyway. However, we are doing homelessness so the opening will probably be the homeless person waking up on the streets with just a sleeping bag. Because of this we will use early morning which got the lowest number of votes with just 3%. Other options included midday and late night. Midday would be difficult because it is not a time when much happens apart from people eating lunch. Filming late at night would be very difficult as what you see on camera is darker than what is happening in real life anyway, so if it is too dark then you will not be able to see anything.