Questionnaire Results

Our questionnaires contained 9 questions, and we gave out 15 of them. 10 of the people surveyed were teenagers and the remaining 5 were adults (three men and two women). We gave out more to teenagers considering that the character in the film is played by a teenager, and we are aiming it at a teenage audience, more than any other audience at least.

The first question asked if the viewer would mind seeing a film in black and white, and nobody minded. This was a relief, as it validated our plan to use black and white. The second question gave a choice of characters and asked which was preferred (out of private detective, police officer and civillian). 60% of people asked wanted a private detective, whilst 40% wanted a civilian. To compromise and please both groups, we chose a private detective with civilian aspects as the main character.

We asked them which films come to mind at the mention of film noir (after explaining what film noir was, just in case) and got a varied response. The most commonly re-occuring films were The Maltese Falcon, and Sin City (the latter specifically from the teenagers). When we asked what people like about film noir, people noted such things as the clever dialogue and the stylish black and white look. Some said how film noir focuses on such things as plot and character rather than special effects.

On the other hand, people said that when there are special effects, they tend to be weak and sometimes the lack of colour can make things a bit unclear on screen. When asked how important a soundtrack is to them, 40% said that it was a massive factor, 40% said it was quite important and the remaining 20% said that they don't really notice. Therefore we plan to use an unintrusive but noticable soundtrack, as nobody objected to a soundtrack - they just offered various degrees of entusiasm.

For an appropriate location, we offered 5 different suggestions. They were: an office, an alleyway, a rundown building and a modern building. 80% of of people chose the alleyway, and the rest took the rundown building. Half of our film will be set in an alleyway, and the other half will be set in a building, not exactly a rundown one, but an old and atmospheric one. Rundown buildings are hard to come by.

The survey contained the following four choices - witty dialogue, mood-building silence, specialist costumes and interesting camera angles - and asked the respondant to rank them in order of preference. Witty dialogue almost always came first and costumes last, with the others in a fairly random order. This means that we will lay a lot of importance on dialogue (in this case, narration) and not worry too much about the costumes. That doesn't mean we will disregard the costumes entirely though.