Age of participant
The oldest participant was 45 and the youngest participant was16.
The mean age of the fifteen participants is 21.46 years old.
The range of the ages is 29 years old.
The statistically median age is 18 years old.
From the above statics I can conclude that a younger audience is attracted via the internet. If I was going to produce a short film that targeted an older viewing audience, I would have to rethink my strategy and revert back to the traditional method of handing out hard copies of any questionnaires, to gain valuable constructed responses. I believe that although people from the older generation use the internet, for shopping and researching their interests, many do not use social networking sites yet.
Gender of participant
Eight females and seven males completed the questionnaire.
Do you believe a teenager would be a good protagonist character for the making of a short film?
Thirteen (87%) out of the possible fifteen participants stated that they do believe a teenager would be a good protagonist character for the making of a short film. I believe this is due to the fact that the majority (11) of my participants were in fact teenagers themselves. However, two participants responded with the answer ‘Don’t Know’ and interestingly one was a 17 year old female and one was an 18 year old male and yet the three participants that were slightly older had responded by stating ‘Yes’. Correlations, of these analysed responses indicate that the majority of a society would be tempted to watch a film that had a teenage protagonist.
How interested are you in issues that are based around teenage subjects?
Fourteen (93%) out of the possible fifteen participants indicated that they were quite interested in issues that are based around teenage subjects. The one participant who stated that they, in fact did not know, was an eighteen year old male. As this was the same participant, who had selected the ‘don’t know’ option for the previous question, I personally believe that he had not really thought about this in great detail prior to completing this questionnaire. Moreover, this now informs me that a small minority of society probably would indicate a duplication of his response. Therefore, advertising the short film correctly is an important issue to attract a wide potential audience.
How would you define the word ‘Relationships’?
I asked this question to see how my participants conceived the word ‘Relationships’. Basically, the majority of my participants outlined the basic concept, illustrating a positive correlation between the participants. However, one older male participant described a more personal thought:
"Relationships to me can be the most wonderful thing or most dreadful."
Prior to compiling my audience questionnaire three, I had an initial film idea in mind and from this participant’s outline of how they would define relationships, made me realise and deepen my understanding to reflect that life is not always perfect and certain relationships can have a negative effect too.
How would you define the word ‘Disability’?
Prior to constructing this questionnaire, I had an initial storyline in mind and again I wanted to know what my volunteer participants conceived the word ‘Disability’ to be. Again, the majority correlated to give a mental and physical outline, but one older male participant wrote:
“Ive lived with disability in my life more than most and i can see that it can be a problem to do certain tasks given the disability while at the same time many people with disabilities excel in other aspects of their lives more so than able bodied people”
While one older female participant stated:
“something that has a somewhat negative impact on a persons life”
From my initial storyline idea, I had visualised my protagonist to have a social disability connected to shyness and this interesting statement cleverly summed up that as long as something has a negative impact then that can be perceived as a form of disability.
Scenario – An educationally underachieving shy teenage boy desperately wants to approach a female he is really keen on. The trouble is, she is his complete opposite and basically, she is very rarely on her own and when she is, her face is always in a text book.
If this scenario was to be made into a short film, where do you think the main content of the film should be filmed?
Forty percent of my participants concluded that they believed the school class room would be the best location for the filming, of the main content of the film, whereas no one chose the option ‘park’. From this questionnaire I can now safely rule out any idea of a park scene.
Four participants chose to indicate an alternative option and these were:
Club
School Library
Shopping Centre
Party
After carefully consideration of each, of these options I have decided to eliminate the suggestion of a Shopping Centre and Club as filming around the general public could prove tricky with onlookers trying to get camera coverage and this would make the short film look unprofessional. A party setting would create a conventional setting and I really want to challenge the normal. However, the school library does have an appeal, but it is usually filled with students studying in silence and for the protagonist to approach the girl he admires could prove to be too much of a cliché without any challenges.
How should the boy approach the female?
None of my participants chose to choose the options ‘Talk to her directly, even if she is surrounded by friends’ and ‘Email her’, so I will eliminate these two options. However seven participations decided to select either ‘Speak to her on the telephone’ or ‘Text her’ indicating that this was a popular area. Moreover, two participations chose to implement their, own solution:
“well she seems like a book worm and given that im an educationally underachieving shy teenage boy id ask that she tutor me” (Stated from an older male)This response relates to the previous scenario, so depth thought was given before responding to this question and at this particular stage of research, I feel that I may include something like this to also challenge the normal conventional of order.
“she could be doing homework lookign cinfused and he gives her the answer” (16 year old female)Although there is no right or wrong to this questionnaire, this response does not really apply to an educationally underachieving shy teenage boy.
If the male in question does not have her address, telephone number or email address, how do you believe he should obtain this?
The response to this question varied with three participants selecting, ask her directly and four participants selecting, ask one of his friends, to find out. Taking the protagonists proposed personality into consideration; I believe he would be too shy to admit he liked the girl in question, to a friend.
Three participants decided to give a personal response:
“facebook, under her information” (16 year old female)
“maybe facebook stalk... ect very modern and brings in to context internet safey” (19 year old female)
“try resourcing her home phone number through directory inquiries” (18 year old male)
These three responses really comply with the norm, and I really would like to challenge the conventional way, therefore further brain storming is needed.
Do you know of any films that represent and explore the issues of disability and relationships?
Eight participants responded ‘Yes’ to this question while seven participants selected the ‘No’ option. There was no correlation between the responses that would categorise the gender or age of the participants.
If you answered 'Yes' to the previous question, please give the title of the film and was its representation successful?
There was a mixture of film titles put forth and all the participants believed the film did contain a successful representation of both disability and relationships.
The film titles the participants chose to highlight on this questionnaire were;
At First Sight
X Men Movies
A Beautiful Mind
Of Mice and Men
Bubble Boy
Forrest Gump
Gattaca
Unbreakable
The Elephant Man
After Thomas
Antonio’s Breakfast
Kes
What do you believe are the most important things for a filmmaker to pay attention to in a film setting out to represent, and explore teenage relationships and disability?
There were various responses from all the participants, but one particular response from a 29 year old female, got me stretching the word ‘disability’.
“knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the disability being explored, at the same time trying to avoid typical stereotypes or obvious plot lines. physical or mental disabilities do not stop a person being "normal", they just have restictions. one big thing that still remains today in teenage society is the refusal to accept those who are different through their own choice or disability”.
Can shyness be a disability on its own? I will look deeper into this fact.
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