I have created a survey to discover what my target audience would most like to see in a musical production in order to write a script for one that I shall be filming. I put my survey on a number of social networking sites so I could receive answers from participants informing me exactly what they want to see in musicals. My results are really reliable, as the majority of my respondents were aged 16-18 which is my target audience. From my survey, I have collected some quantitative data within my results, such as the participants age, favourite genre of musicals, preferred genre of music and the overall likeliness of the participant actually watching a musical. Below I have put my quantitative data into graphs, to document show my results clearly.
In my graphs, although I have recieved twenty-eight participants for my survey, I have more answers in certain questions because my questions allowed the participants to give me more than one answer if they wished to.
Through my survey, I have also collected some informative qualitative data with some specific responses to my survey questions. This is because I asked some open questions, allowing the respondent to give me detailed answers rather than a closed question, limiting them to multiple option answers.
One of my open questions asked “What would you like to see take place in a musical, and why?” to which I got the response from a participant “I’d like to see an evolution of characters, showing real depth because it would help viewers to engage in the story.” This is the sort of response I wold take into consideration when developing the characters in the musical. Through analysing my qualitative data even further, I discovered that the majority of the respondents want some romance to take place in a musical. I found this out from responses such as “Romance, as it always heightens the story, especially if there is a love story” and “A romantic story, as they are always entertaining” and also “A wedding taking place”.
In another open question, which will help me to collect qualitative data, I asked the participants to “describe your ‘perfect’ ending…”. From this particular question, I discovered that the majority of the participants wanted a happy ending, yet with perhaps a moral in the ending and still being realistic. I got this result from the responses such as “The conflict is resolved, but not necessarily a stereotypical fairytale ending.” and “Things should be resolved, and the viewer should be left with something” and also “Realistic and relevant from the rest of the musical, with happy endings”.
In the general storyline of the musical, the participants want to see something to do with “compelling character development” throughout, where the characters “redeem themselves” and where the characters are involved in a “love triangle”. Another popular general storyline which the participants responded with was something with the theme of history, as they answered that for a storyline they would love to see “Historical overtones” and “something not set in the current day in time”.
I also asked my participants what their ideal character in a musical would be, asking them to give me a descriptive answer in this open question, allowing me to collect the qualitative data to find exactly what characters they would like to see. The respondents said they’d want a character who is “intelligent, kind, funny, sensible and romantic”, also someone who is “tough on the outside, yet still kindhearted on the inside”. Some participants even told me their favourite character in already existing musicals, such as ‘Mary Poppins’ ‘Enjorlas from Les Miserables’ and ‘Ron Weasley’.
Through my survey responses, I have come to discover that the majority of the participants of my survey would prefer a musical with the theme of romance, with exactly 50% of respondents opting for romance when asked what their favourite type of musicals is.
I have also found out that most people generally don’t like the idea of a musical with the theme of Sci-Fi, as this option on the question ‘What is your favourite type of musicals’ only got one vote, which is 3.6% of all participants.
Most of my participants preferred genre of music is rock, with 46.4% of my participants choosing that over classical with 17.9%, pop with 25% and alternative with 32.1% of participants choosing that option. This tells me that in my musical production, I should incorporate some rock music into it as that’s what appeals to the target audience.
When I asked my participants whether or not they agreed with the statement “Grease is the best musical” the vast majority of them (42.9%) answered that they strongly disagreed, although 9 participants (32.1%) said that they nor agreed or disagreed with it. From this, I shall take into account the participants preferences and shall not include anything similar to the storyline of ‘Grease’ in my musical production.
I have found out that people enjoy watching musicals with a happy ending, with participants responding to the question ‘ with answers such as “a happy ending with a kiss or marriage” and “a happy ending, all loose ends tied up”.
My participants, when asked what their ideal character would be for a musical, mostly said that they’d like “compelling characters” who are “likeable, kind and sacrificial”. Now I have found this out, I will refer back to this, and include a protagonist who has these characteristics.
The majority of my survey participants were females, with 20 out of 28 respondents being female (71.4%). This particular piece of information tells me that females most enjoy musicals, with males not being particularly interested, therefore females who are 16-18 are my target audience for this musical.
The second most popular type of musical overall was ‘Comedy’. From knowing this, and that the most popular genre of musicals was ‘Romance’ I could incorporate both genres together to create a ‘Rom-Com’ as that is what the majority of the participants are wanting to see in a musical.
From my survey question ‘What’s your preferred genre of music?’ I found out that ‘R&B’ (7.1% with 2 votes) and ‘indie’ (17.9% with 5 votes) were the least preferred music genres, therefore shall not consider including these music types in the musical.
Looking at some of my qualitative data results, I have found out that from asking my participants what their ideal fictional character in a musical would be, a lot of them responded with a character that is realistic. I think this is because they would want to relate to and make a connection with the character they are viewing.
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