It is important to get our target audience's views on the horror film genre and different aspects to horror films which interest them and they enjoy in order to produce our media product to full effect. In order to collect this information we decided to do a questionnaire which we would hand out to people within our target audience. To reach out to a wider audience rather than peers, neighbours or family, we also launched our own poll using the website http://www.misterpoll.com/ the direct link to our poll is
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/506800. Using the Internet we are able to reach people we may not have access to, for example people in other countries and with other interests to ourselves, its a global audience. The information will be very interesting and useful to us once collected as we will be able to access a deeper understanding of our target audience.
As well as using a poll, we decided to hand out a questionnaire so that we had an immediate response. We deliberately handed them out to both male and females all in different age brackets, but still with in the ages of who we are wanting to target. The horror genre is very diverse and appeals to a very wide audience. There must be an age restriction as the film may involve scenes of a graphic nature which is unacceptable for a young child to view.
The questionnaires have given us some positive and helpful feedback. We produced the questionnaire to help and guide us on our product. They have shown that the older group of the audience seem to enjoy more the gory aspect of the horror genre. The younger age groups seem to like more of the spooky, and startling type of horror. As we want to hail the age range we questioned, our teaser trailer needs to have these aspects in. We also found out that not all film watchers feel that handheld filming is more affective, this is because they prefer that sharp cut edits encourage more of a reaction from you, the audience. Noticeably the most preferred location, was in a secluded area, like woods, accompanied by some sort of abstract building. This is very helpful for us as we have already a location in mind that links those two aspects together. We also discovered that in a trailer the receivers are looking for originality and something different and interesting. Instant shock is also strived for as well as a classic cliff hanger or rhetorical question. We plan to include these aspects in our teaser trailer, so they not only follow codes and conventions, but also break them, to make our trailer unique and a film the target audience will want to watch. The most preferred stock character and type of storyline was a damsel in distress, not just limiting it to a woman in distress, but the scenario of a group, or a singular person in a disturbing, dangerous situation. This is because the audience can relate to this situation more than an 'alien attack' for example, as it is more realistic and so plays on the audiences minds, as they could possibly experience what they are viewing.
Once our poll was published on the website we waited for anonymous Mister Poll users to vote so we could collect the results. The questions and results are shown below.
Q1. Are you Male or Female?
After collecting our poll results we found the people answering our poll questions were predominantly male. Stereotypically, the horror genre may be seen as a male genre in the same way romance films are seen as appealing more to women. Although it may be seen as ‘bad’ to stereotype, it is important to do so when deciding our target audience and how we are going to make our products appealing. We have decided women are a part of our target audience but we need to bear in mind how the horror genre is represented and received.
Q2. How old are you?
Q2. How old are you?
We decided our target audience was in the age range of 15-35. After collecting our poll results the majority of people were in the age of 27-35 years old with 25% and 50+ years old with 25% also. 16-19 year olds also took a large part in our poll with 22%. Although people who are 50+ may not necessarily be targeted by us, it is still important to take in to account the thoughts and ideas they supply us with as they may still be interested in our products. However, it is very helpful that a large majority were between the ages of 16-19 and 27-35 as this sits comfortably in our target audience age range from the youngest targets to the oldest.
Q3. What is your favourite horror genre?
With 47% of the poll voters deciding murder/gore were there prefered horror genre, this gives us a clear indication of which route we will go down when creating our trailer. As this idea is clearly in the lead this suggests that these voters would have had some experience and enjoyment with this genre previously which suggests to us that we will need to include something a bit different in order to keep them guessing and interested in our trailer and ancillary texts. If we follow normal conventions and storylines then we may not keep our audience interested as they may feel they've seen our film or similar films before. This has given us ideas to challenge normal conventions of a trailer.
Q4. Do you prefer psychological thrillers or violence?
As can be seen from the pie chart, voters who took part in our poll prefer psychological thrillers as opposed to violence but only by quite a small percentage. This inspires us to perhaps combine the two to appeal to the whole audience. We feel we should have an emphasise on a psychological thriller with violent undertones. We wouldn't include graphic gore scenes but include some violence as previously the majority of voters wanted murder included and the two come hand in hand.
This pie chart shows very clearly the preference the voters have for colour as opposed to black and white film. With such a huge majority involved with this we decided this would be the most interesting convention to challenge. Although this could be seen as quite risky, we wanted our trailer to offer something new and as our trailer would appeal to the audience in every other way it would be interesting to see how our trailer would be recieved. It would certainly form some interest - hopefully in our favour. We feel this would support the genre we are striving for and keep the audience talking and keep building intrigue in terms of our film which, essentially, is the purpose of a trailer.
Q6. Do you like the effects of a stationary or hand held camera?
The majority, 64%, of voters decided they prefered stationary camera filming as opposed to the effects of a hand held camera. We decided to follow the codes and conventions of a horror trailer and use a stationary camera but also in this genre, it isn't unusual to see a hand held camera being used. As 35% still have an interested in this sort of filming we decided we might use it in some aspects of our film/trailer. Shots which we might typically use a hand held camera in may include point of view shots, for example the villain 'spying' on the victim or perhaps in a struggle scene where the two come into contact. This will heighten the effect the scene will have on the audience, especially a point of view shot as this will make them feel like they have an advantage over the victim.
As we suspected the majority, 60% of poll users, felt that a trailer does have an important part in deciding whether or not they will see a film or not. After gathering this information we must produce a trailer which will not only create an interest in the film but enough interest for the audience to go ahead and view the film. We will do this by following the conventions of a horror traielr but also supplying them with something new and different by challenging codes such as using black and white and perhaps not following the usual narrative structure of a trailer. This poll has played a fundamental part in creating our trailer to cater for our target audience and inspiring us to experiment with conventions.
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