For my audience research I comprised a series of questions. I sent out the questionnaire on facebook as a private message. From the 20 people I sent it to, I only got 8 replies. With the data I collected, I have selected the questions and answers that I think are most useful and have created some charts with some of the quantitative data. I have also given some examples of the answers people gave for the qualitative data.
I have written the question that I asked, along with the results I got for it, and then a small conclusion.
Q1. What gender are you?I planned to ask an even amount of male and females, but I did not get replies from all. This gave me a clear understanding when looking into different opinions that different sexes sometimes have about films.
Q2. What age are you?
The people that I asked were between the ages of 15-17. This is the age group that I intend to target my film at, so I thought that their responses were key, rather than any other age of people. 
Q5. How regularly do you watch films?
I learnt that the majority of people watched films approximately twice a week. I thought that this would be the answer that I got, assuming that people will watch films at the weekend.
Q6. How do you watch films?
Everyone that I asked gave several answers to this question. I can see that everyone consumes films is more than one way. This will be due to the wide variety of different forms of distribution and the ease of access to these. No one is asked said that they watch films online, however, one person did say they watched films through “love film DVDs”, which is an online company.
Q8. Why do you watch films?
The majority of people said that they watched films “for entertainment”. I feel this answer is a good representation for a vast number of people. However, one person said “it’s something to do if I’m bored”. Also one person said “I love the escapism that they give me. Often enjoyment but sometimes simply for great acting and a good story.”
Q10. Have you ever seen a social realism film?
From the people asked, no one said that they had not seen a social realism film. However, there were 3 people who said that they were not sure if they had seen one. This is probably linked to their later response, which shows that the same people did not know what social realism is. Some people extended their answers, giving examples such as “Kidulthood, East is East, The Full Monty”.
Q14. Would you rather watch a big budget or small budget film?
Most people said that they would rather watch a big budget film. However, there were some people that said small budget because they “are often more realistic”, “big budget can distract from the story”, “if it has a good story to it”.
Q15. Would you enjoy a film regarding issues that affect you? Half agreed that they do enjoy relating to topics in films. Social Realism films relate to the real world which features every day topics and issues. The other half were split between “no”, “sometimes”, don’t know”.
Q16. What is your understanding of the term social realism?
There were a variety of answers supplied, that basically represented the term “Social Realism”. However, there were two people that could not give an answer. I can conclude that educationally they had not come across this statement before either at school or through the media. Since many people got the definitions correct, this tells me that the genre is known and understood by the majority of society.
Q19. Do you feel there is a gap in the market for serious films focusing on the issues that affect young people? Please explain.
Most of the people said that they felt there was a gap in the market. One person said that all the current films out their “all focus on the negative side of youths. They all paint a picture of teenagers being ‘chavs’, which is really narrow-minded”. Another person said, “why could film makers not show a different kind of social group.” This is why I have decided to focus my film on another social group that is not ‘chavs’.
Two people did say that they thought there was not a gap, “because most people watch films to escape their troubles, whereas social realism brings attention to them.””
Q21. Do you feel that a story regarding issues with parents would be interesting to watch?
Seven of the eight people said that they thought this type of story would be a good idea and interesting to watch. This shows that this theme would be popular amongst viewers.
To conclude, firstly, I feel that the reason I only had eight replies to the questionnaire was due to there being too many questions and that when most people are on facebook, they only go online for a short time. They do not want to have to spend a long time having to answer questions. Next time, I would make the questionnaire shorter and give it to the people directly to fill out.
