Audience | FMP

Questionnaires For Friends

In order to ensure the authenticity of my interpretation of the experience I needed evidence and examples from other people to back myself up. The whole point of the film is for it to be relatable and for people to take comfort in knowing that they aren't alone in feeling these things. By simply using just my own experiences and taking random inspiration from conversations with friends I wouldn't be able to make the film fully relatable to anyone other than myself, which isn't what I want. So, before I started the project, I conducted a short and unplanned out survey on Google Forms and shared it to about 80 people on Snapchat where I received 8 responses.

The first two questions of the survey were asking about how people have spent their time during lockdown on social media. I included this because I knew that I wanted to include a tangent in my film making a commentary on social media and I wanted to see if my theory of people using social media way more frequently since the pandemic was correct, which it was.

The next few questions in the survey were mainly about mental health and different things related health such as quality of sleep and how people pass their time during lockdown. I think that struggling to sleep is a great way of showing mental deterioration in my film and I wanted to see if people's sleep schedule has deteriorated so that I could prove my theory and fully incorporate this into my film. Another one of the questions was asking about a strange dream that people have had. This is because in my film I want Joe to have an incredibly dark and utterly random dream, just like how dreams often are. It's hard to make up dreams because they're usually so random that you couldn't make them up on the spot, so I wanted to use examples from different people and combine them together to create an authentically. The other question was asking about if people if they feel that they have changed during the lockdown and if so for better or worse. I know that my own mental health has gotten a lot worse during the pandemic and I know from talking to friends that there's has too, however I wanted concrete evidence and multiple responses from different people to gain a better understanding. 19](Lockdown Experiences, 2021)

The Second Survey:

The second survey was conducted later in the project towards mid-April. The reason I made this survey is because I had a better understanding of what I wanted to ask people and I wanted to reach a lot more people so that I could have a broader range of answers. To get more responses I shared the link to the Google Forms onto my Snapchat story, and both my private Instagram story and my main Instagram story. I ended up receiving 32 responses in total.

The point of the first few questions was to get an understanding of how people have been spending their time during lockdown. I asked them about whether they feel that they have changed as a person over the course of the lockdown as the main character in my film changes quite a bit as the film goes on and his mental health declines. I knew that most people would have become more depressed and isolated over the course of the lockdown just like Joe in my film so having this physical evidence to back up Joe's experience as a very real thing that has commonly happened is good to have.

I wanted the questions towards the end to be quite personal because I need to understand the personal experiences from as many people as I possibly can in order to get the best understanding of the common experiences of lockdown and incorporate that into my script so I gave the optional questions about people's biggest regrets during lockdown and about whether they find themselves looking through old photos of before the lockdown wishing they could go back. I asked this because I originally wanted there to be a scene where my main character does this and I wanted to see if it was a thing that people normally do. 20](Lockdown Experiences, 2021)

Survey 3

To guarantee that I would be able to get an audience for my film, I conducted yet another survey on Google Forms that I shared to an even larger audience of people. The main questions in this survey asked if people were interested in the idea of the film, where they would want to see it, and if there would be an audience interested in the unconventional way of telling the story I'm going for. I ended up receiving 102 responses on the survey however 77 of which were adults of ages 30+.

Thanks to this survey I can now be sure that I definitely will have an audience, because in the question that asked "Would you be interested in seeing a fictional short film centering around mental health during quarantine?" 84 out of 102 people responded with "yes", and only 3 people replying with "no".

The following question asked the participant why or why not they wouldn't want to see the film. Most of the responses said that it would be interesting to see a film about somebody's deteriorating mental health in lockdown and that a lot of people would find it helpful and comforting. Many responses aid that it was an important topic to address given how difficult the past year has been for people and the rise in mental health issues amongst people of all ages.

It's become clear to me after completing this survey that I need to make sure that the film does address mental health at the forefront and provide comfort and create a therapeutic atmosphere so that people will enjoy it and be emotionally affected by it.

The next question asked was where people would most likely be willing to watch the film. I asked this so that I could get an understanding of the best way to distribute my film where I can get the most amount of people watching it as possible. The majority of the responses said on social media sitrs and streaming services like Netflix. Unfortunately I would not be able to get my film on Netflix due to it being a student film. Social Media is something that can easily be done, and the majority of the responses mentioned YouTube specifically, as well as Instagram and Facebook getting frequent mentions.

The responses have shown me that the best way to share and distribute film is on social media. This will get me the biggest audience possible and it also allows people to share and comment leaving feedback on the film, which is essential to me moving forward and progressing.

The next question asked if people were intrigued in the film being told in an unconventional style. Asking this question is important because the way in which my film will be told isn't something linear that mainstream audiences will be used to seeing, so being able to know their thoughts on this and whether it will deter them from watching the film is important. Thankfully, the majority of the responses were all for the idea of the film being unconventional, with only 1 person responding with "no". There were quite a few responses of "not sure" and "maybe" which is understandable however it hopefully means that they would be willing to give the film a go.

The responses have luckily solidified the fact that my film being slightly experimental and unconventional will not deter a large portion of my audience as I feared it would.

In the next question I attached a picture of the pitch of my film and asked if people were interested about the film based just off reading the pitch that I wrote.

Asking this question was important because it would allow me to see if people liked the pitch I had written and would still be interested in watching the film after reading it. This allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of how interested my audience are in my project. 82 people answered the poll with "yes" meaning that I have still retained my audiences attention and won over the vast majority of them. Only 2 people responded with "no" the rest responded with "maybe" and "not sure" which is still good and better than a no.

From this question and the following question which asked why they responded the way they did, I've gained an understanding of what I need to do and provide to my audience in my film to satisfy them. 21](Audience Research, 2021)