Questionnaire

For further research into audience and public interest, I decided to create a questionnaire. Because I want to develop my pre-production skills from last year I showed each willing participant two video extracts from YouTube. Both were observational documentaries as this is the genre of documentary that I have chosen for my film. I used the two videos that I analysed myself in my research work ‘A Spyhole For Cats’ and ‘The Boy Who Sees Without Eyes’. I used this method as I feel that by showing my participants examples of work and then getting their comments and opinions on them, it will allow for a deeper insight into what is preferable in an observational documentary. I used 5 participants of different age and gender, so as to get diversity of opinion. The questions I asked were:

•How did you feel about the establishing shots in the two different documentaries?
•Did either of the documentaries move you emotionally in anyway way?
•Were there any particular camera angles or shots that you liked in the documentaries?
•Why do you think they were effective?
•Is there anything that you would have liked to see in the documentaries, that was not included?
•How do you feel about use of music in documentaries?
•Did you like the editing?

Analysis of results.

All of the participants said that they preferred the establishing shot in ‘The boy who sees without eyes’ because it introduced us to him, rather than beginning with him talking straight away. They said that because they had to wait to be introduced to the subject, it made them want to continue watching. Two of the three participants said that they were moved by ‘A spyhole for cats’ because they felt that they developed an emotional tie to the interviwee because he was the only person on camera. The other three said that ‘The boy who sees without eyes’ affected them the most, but this was due to his medical condition, rather than the style of documentary. All five participants said that they particularly liked the close-up’s as they felt that they portrayed a sense of vulnerability in the subjects, and made the documentary more personal rather than subjective. This will be a point to take into consideration when shooting my documentary. They also liked that they were shown shots of their homes and the area that they live in. One participant said that they would have preferred to see the buyers of the subjects work in ‘A spyhole for cats’. One participant felt that the lack of music in ‘A spyhole for cats’ was effective, however the rest disagreed saying it lacked a lot of emotion without an audio track. So I will continue with my original plan to use music. All said that they preferred the lack of transitions in the documentaries, and preferred the use of clean cuts, as it portrays the footage as being more true to actuality.