In depth Questionnaire Results

We gave out our questionnaire to 25 different people spanning across 40 decades of age. However only 17 actually responded and gave us their answers. The results are mixed and somewhat disappointing for us and the film noire genre as a whole. The seven questions were for us to understand how well the genre is known in today’s society and it was meant to give us in depth feedback. According to one response the questionnaire was too in depth and we found that a lot of the responses couldn’t complete a lot of the questions. Below is the collected results summarised in the easiest way possible with open and closed questions.

Question one asked for the participant to simply define Film Noir as a genre. The responses varied quite a lot with one response cropping up a little too often. Two participants accurately responded to the question with good detail while six participants answered with a straight ‘No’. In the middle of these responses were answers that maybe knew the genre but couldn’t define it accurately. This lack in knowledge of the genre worried us as a group because it seems that the genre is not meant for today’s society and that the times have drastically moved on.

The second question asked if the participants felt that there was a gap in the cinema market for Film Noir in this modern society. Seven participants responded with ‘Yes’ and a lot of them explained that we should modernise the genre. Out of the 17 responses only two of them felt that there was not a gap in the market and the other eight either left blank or were not sure. This reassures us that doing a film noir is the right option a large proportion of our audience does feel that there is a gap for the genre we want to do.

Our third question was a closed question and asked if the audience would watch a film if it was in black and white. A remarkable 14 responses said they would watch a film in black and white with only 3 stating that they wouldn't.



Similar to the previous question the fourth one is also a closed question. We wanted to find out if our audience would rather us to update the genre with mobile phones etc. Or if they would rather see the old style 1940’s style. We received 11 responses saying we should update the genre while only 6 wanted us to maintain the classic style.



The fifth question was quite a difficult one for the participants to answer but we needed to know how well the genre was known so we asked them: What conventions would you see during a noir film. We understood that we probably wouldn’t receive that many answers for this question but to our delight we received 5 really good answers that gave us at least two conventions. Although 12 participants failed to answer incorrectly or at all we still feel that there is a glimpse of hope for the genre and that we are heading in the right direction because of the few people that do know a little about the genre.

Question six was set up to find out what noir films the participants had seen before if any at all. The question was a closed question with room to specify the answer they gave. We concluded that 6 people gave responses that were films classed as neo noir or film noir and 11 out of the 17 hadn’t ever seen one. This does show us that there is an audience for the genre although only small in today’s society but bigger than we anticipated.

The final question was a closed question trying to find out if the participants would pay to see a noir film at the cinema. The results were nothing like what we expected. With 6 participants leaving the question blank and only 3 answering ‘no’ it was a clear wakeup call that people did want to see the genre once again and that they would actually pay money to see it as well.