AUDIENCE RESARCH: SURVEYS

• For this question, the majority of respondents (70%) were female with only 30% being male. This could foresee an unbalanced conclusion as the survey consisted of 10 respondents but not an equal weighting of male and females. However, the questions asked later o in the survey leaned more to the favour of the female respondents, for example, “what is your opinion of an all female cast…?”

• Having a more balanced ratio of male and female respondents would have possibly helped to eliminate any discrepancies in the shared opinions of all those that were questioned.

Q1.

• A large majority of respondents (70%) belonged to the age range of 16-20 years old while 30% of respondents were in the age range of 21-25. All other age ranges consisting of 26-40 year olds were not questioned in this survey. It would have possibly been helpful to include the opinion of an older target audience, however, this may have affected the younger target audience our film trailer is aimed at. It was probably most appropriate to question people within the age ranges of 16-25 because they are possibly the most aware of the changing culture within entertainment and, most importantly, have an interest in supernatural horror films.

• It was also a lot easier to acquire respondents of this age group since it is the social group we are surrounded by the most – this helped us efficiently carry out this audience research in order to continue researching other aspects of the supernatural horror film genre.

Q2.

• Only one respondent did not enjoy watching horror films leaving 90% of respondents answering ‘Yes’ to the question. This question was asked to help summarise the opinion of all respondents so we had an idea of how the age range and genders correlated with their attitudes towards supernatural horror films.

• The responses would most likely have come out a lot differently had we asked an older age group, possibly with a lot more respondents answering ‘No’. This means that question 5 would have been largely impacted since they would have to skip it.

Q3.

• About 4 responses included generic ideas of what a horror film would consist of which was ‘blood’. We now realise that what we should have asked was what they expected to see in a supernatural horror film. What we initially thought was more practical to ask was what they thought horror films comprised of, mainly because we didn’t want to confuse or make them miss the point by asking the about supernatural horror films.

• This miscommunication has possibly cost us vital information about what people expect to see in supernatural films, meaning we don’t have a basis for what to include in our film trailer that our target group could possibly familiarise themselves with.

• However, the information from the responses could still be greatly useful a they do include the overall theme of horror, for example, “ghosts, spirits…”, “suspense…”, “…something extraordinary.” These themes can easily be used in our own film trailer as they are expected to be seen in a supernatural horror film genre.

Q4.

• For this question, it was important that we highlighted the idea that this survey was based upon the supernatural horror film genre and not just the horror genre as a whole. We used this question to assess our audience’s idea of supernatural horror and to see whether or not they knew what supernatural horror films had been produced.

• Since we asked them to choose four of their favourite films, there are four separate responses. For this first response, 4 out of 9 respondents chose Orphan as their favourite supernatural horror film – this is consistent in all later responses possibly because they feel that this film epitomises everything that should be seen in a supernatural horror film. 2 out of 9 respondents chose Sinister as their favourite film while the last 3 responses were Paranormal Activity, Confessions and Final Destination.

Q5. (1)

Q5. (2)

Q5. (3)

Q5. (4) • Overall, the most popular film mentioned from the responses

was Orphan with an overall response score of 7. Other notable films that were mentioned were: Paranormal Activity (6), Sinister (4), Conjuring (4) and Insidious (3). Other films mentioned were either not from the supernatural horror genre at all or were less popular commercially.

• Only 3 respondents disagreed with the idea of having an all female cast leaving 7 respondents in agreeance with our film trailer concept. It was interesting to see the reasons why some respondents thought it was a good or a bad idea and it helped us further evaluate what our intentions are for including a majority female cast.

• From these responses we can see that most people are either excited, intrigued or confident in our film trailer’s concept and so this compounds our idea and is an indication that it is a good idea to reproduce.

Q6.

Q7.• Most respondents mentioned that the recent trailers they

enjoyed watching were appealing because they induced feelings of suspense, contained plot twists and were intriguing to watch. Most of the film trailers mentioned, however, were either of mainstream films such as James Bond or supernatural horror films that were already mentioned such as Orphan or Cabin In The Woods. Some respondents also mentioned in their answers what elements of the film genre that were conformed to, therefore making it enjoyable to watch.

Q8.• For a survey consisting of the majority of respondents stating

that their favourite supernatural horror film was Orphan, the respondents have instead decided that the most successful supernatural horror film in their opinion is Paranormal Activity with 7 out of 10 responses claiming that Paranormal Activity is the most successful because they “keep releasing more”. The respondents have gauged that Paranormal Activity is a film franchise, however, they regard the consistent releases as indications of success. Only 3 responses contained different films which were regarded as successful such as The Shining, Orphan and The Exorcist.