GENRE GAME SHOW

Abstract

My Honors Thesis is a combination of both my major in Psychology and my minor in Film & Television. To utilize both disciplines, I decided to create a video based on the survey data I gathered about audiences' movie genre preferences. In the film industry, we have been trying to figure out audiences' preferences for centuries, and most of the data now is collected illegally through streaming services. I used a public Google Forms survey to collect this data legally from volunteer survey takers, via QR-coded posters & social media posts. Posters were distributed throughout Arizona, and before the survey was closed in April 2025, there were 340 survey entries. The ultimate goal was to find the best movie genre combo, with a variety of 8 selected genres and 3 combo add-ins. These add-ins are comedies, animation, and musicals; they are labeled as such since they can fit into any of the 8 genre categories. Through a 3 round game show, contestants earn points by guessing which genre is being referenced in each interview. Each interviewee has signed a legal consent form before being recorded. Interviews were used for the 5 worst-ranking genres and were divided into 2 guessing rounds, while the final round is the reveal of the top 3 best genre combos.