1. Primary research- Survey results
I created my survey on www.survey monkey.com that aimed to aid my thriller research,
questions included age, where the film would be viewed, which aspects of a thriller the
viewer preferred, how a thriller creates a feeling of suspense and many others. When
creating this questionnaire I did allow the reader to answer with more than one option, but
did not allow the reader to skip the question in order to get a full set of results. Here is the
link to my survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8PL76XX.
I emailed my survey to several people and also shared the web link to my blog; from this I
acquired 17 results.
These are my following questions and the results from them;
1. What is your gender?
From this screenshot I can tell that the majority of people that filled in my
questionnaire/survey were female by more than 50% of my total answers. This means the
results from my survey may be uneven and biased, this may affect how "fair" the results are.
2.What is your age?
This graph shows the age group answers available that range from under 15 to over 60. I
realize I have also made the mistake of adding the option of "25" in two of the answers
available- something I will look out for when conducting another survey. The highest age
group I found by looking at the graph was 15-25 as the people I asked to fill out my survey
were mostly of my own age group, however as I aim for my own target audience to be of
around this age this shouldn't affect my results in a bad way.

2. 3. What particular traits or features of a thriller film do you enjoy most?
For these open answered questions I used www.wordle.net and pasted the answers into the
generator to create a "word cloud" which analyses the text and produces and image with
the most commonly used words within that text. This way I am able to analyse more fully
the general response from these open ended answers.
From this wordle "word cloud" I am able to tell that answers included featured action, plot,
complex, ending and other "buzz" words to describe the features of a thriller film the viewer
most enjoyed.
4. What is your favourite thriller(s) film and why
From this wordle I see that popular words used included Taken and Tailor (from tinker tailor
soldier spy, and Bourne.
Popular adjectives used which would have been used to describe why the viewer liked these
films are plot and action; this should be an area to focus on and a film type to take influence
from.

3. 5. Do you think the location and use of light affects the thriller film?
With this question I found that 66.7% of people questioned found that light and location
greatly affected the thriller film. I see this as a good response as I find it is of great
importance and it means I will take care in up-keeping this in my own work.
6. What aspects of a thriller film help create a feeling of suspense?
From this wordle i can tell that aspects such as lighting and location or sound are key
features my audience feels help create suspense. In order to respond to this I should focus
on making these aspects as dramatic or as tense as possible in order to portray a quality
effect of suspense that is so essential in thriller films.
7. Is there any particular feature/character/event/location you would like to see in a
thriller film that you haven't seen before?
For this question I couldn't create a wordle cloud or use a graph, instead I read the
responses and have come to this conclusion. Theaudience that viewed my thriller survey
wish to see something new that goes against the stereotypical thriller film traits, they are
tired of the usual film that is becoming too easy to predict. On the other hand some of the
viewers (but a lower percentage) prefers the typical thriller storyline that they know works
so it should be stuck with. I would prefer to stick to the typical thriller traits in my own work,
but I also wish to "surprise" y audience with something new.

4. 8. Which range of characters would be best for a thriller film?
In this question I found that the most popular answer was "an even mix of both male and
female characters" with 66.7%. This is a result I expected, as both genders like to see an
even range of characters and a cast of completely mixed sexes gives the film more diversity
and depth.
9. Should a thriller film have a sub-genre? If so which sub-genre?
The two highest answers from this question were "Thriller/action" with 40.0% and
"Thriller/psychological" with 53.3%. The other options were far behind these figures. This
again was a result I expected as the most popular thrillers e.g. James Bond and Shutter
Island are action/psychological thrillers. I will take influence from these films within my own
work and try and work in some of the traits of these sub genres.

5. 10. Where would you be most likely to view a thriller film?
I asked this question in order to find out if where I will be showing my own two minute
opening of a thriller (online) was a good choice of location in which many people would
receive “online” scored 26.7% which is low compared to the 46.7% that "DVD" scored.
However my survey was not broad and did not cover a wide enough range of people to
determine whether my choice of distribution is faulty or not.
Conclusion of survey results
In conclusion, my primary resource of my survey results provided several indications as to
how to conduct my own thriller in a way that is appealing to my audience. I have discovered
that a majority of people prefer a thriller with an element of action or psychology to the
story, and that I should take influence from films such as Taken and the Bournetrilogy’s in
order to appeal to a wide range of people. My ideal age group and target audience feels
that light and location are very important and that music helps to set suspense- therefore in
order to make my thriller appealing to my audience I shall focus on these areas.
Unfortunately the most popular form of viewing thrillers is not within my budget but I feel a
sufficient amount of viewers will have easy access to my own work.
On previewing this post- I noticed that the text is in different colours, fonts and sizes? I have
tried and failed to amendthis; unaware of any changes I've made to the text settings?
Also my text is layering over previous text when it publishes- but it doesn't show up on the
draft when writing it?!