Focus Group

Focus group planning

For my focus group I am planning on using boys and girls what are 16 – 18, as this age group makes up some of my target audience. I would like to use my focus group to fine out more about what my target audience enjoys about psychological thrillers.

As I am not a very strong public speaker, I am going to use a power point presentation to help me. This presentation with include bullet points about my pitch and each question. This will also help keep my focus group on track. Here are my power point slides:

Focus group

The footage of my focus group can be viewed here:

Focus group results

I completed my plan to do a focus group on Friday the 19^th of October. For my focus group I used 3 year 11 boys, and 3 year 11 girls. I choose 3 of each gender as I felt that this gave a nicely mixed selection of views, and there would be no bias towards either gender or how they are represented. Half way through the focus group 2 upper sixth boys also joined.

I also created a short survey for my focus group to complete. I this survey I asked them to rate mental illness on the scale of 1 to 10, 10 being extremely interested, and 1 being extremely uninterested. I also explained each disorder to my group.

Here are my results for the survey:

It is clear that the ones my focus group is mostly interested in are night terror and OCD.

Answers to my focus group questions

Favourite psychological thriller/thriller?

§  Paranormal activity – due to handheld camera effects

§  Final destination – due to plot involving lots of little stories within the main plot

Key components’ of psychological thriller?

§  Mentally challenging plots

§  Enigmas and problems to solve

§  Unexpected endings

§  Highly level of suspense, so therefore gripping.  

Views on the concept of making normal task appear dramatic through the use of sound?

My focus group felt that stereotypical sound effects are scene as expected and therefore uninteresting. They empathised a greater interest in use of special effects. 

Ideas of sound effects?

§  Creaking noises

§  Things that make you jump and loud noises, which break the suspense

§  Disembodied voices, due to the enigmas created

What colours do you think are suited to a psychological thriller?

§  Black and white

§  Red, due to connotations with blood and death

§  Sepia

§  Enhanced colours

§  Lack of details, to increase suspense and allow audience to think about enigmas

   

Would you prefer a male or female main character?

The majority of my focus group voted female. This is due to the females being able to display more emotions. Females are also stereotypically represented as vulnerable so when they come across as power or strong it is unexpected. My focus group also believed that women have the potential to “look my freaky”. This could be created through mise-en-scene, costume and styling.