Jordan Baldock

Before starting my main questionnaire into the horror genre, I began by asking a larger group of people what their favourite film genre is. The results I received that out of the 30 people I asked 50% decided horror was their favourite genre, I further questioned these 15 people to receive more information specific to my genre and what conventions they would expect to see.

For the first two questions of my questionnaire analysing and researching my chosen film genre was the age and gender of those partaking. The reason I have chosen to include this question was to development an understanding of the demographic that would be interested in my genre as well as those whom my genre would not concern. This would then give me information on what conventions to best reach and appeal to my target audience. The results show that the Demographic of those who chose horror as their favourite genre would be mainly male (3:2 ratio male-female) and in the age range 13-30. This information has shown me my target audience for my film.

The next question I asked was where people most gain access and view movie trailers. This question was designed to not only find further information on my demographic but also give me information on where my trailer could be shown to the public and promote the film. The results show that the majority of people in the questionnaire accessed movie trailers through the internet; this showed me that stereotypically this means the demographic would be of a younger, more technologically active as well as that my trailer would be most effective being released online. This led me to look into the accessibility of websites such as YouTube and Vimeo to show my trailer, YouTube alone gets 2 billion views a day and over 7,000 full length movies on the internet making it a great format to release a movie trailer, it is also socially interactive with comments and rate buttons to receive feedback which could help me on the drafts of my movie trailer.

The next question I chose to ask was what a horror genre consumer thought of the importance a film poster holds. 12 out of the 15 asked (80%) agreed that an effective movie poster makes the film more appealing and encourages them to view. This information has shown me the importance of the movie poster in the as part of a successful movie production. This led me to begin research in the purpose and aims of a movie poster, in which the poster should represent the plot & genre clearly, address target audience, and convey information about the film with higher proportion of image to text. All of these points I aim to address through the poster.

The next questionnaire I used was to ask whether someone who enjoyed horror genres would be encouraged to view the film after looking at a current example of a horror film movie poster. I chose the movie poster for the 2008 film, the strangers as it is of similar theme to which I would like to create and I believe it is an effective example. The results from the questionnaire show that the poster is particularly effect as 33.3% ( two thirds) of those asked said they would be encouraged to view the film. This reinforces theory sourced from the previous question that the poster is a pivotal point of a movie production. I would use the next question to source why this poster was so effective and transfer this into my design and construction.

This is the question I constructed to find out which features and conventions on the example poster were so effective and why. I chose a multiple choice question in which they had to select the most effective feature on the poster, The results show that the most effective features were image, followed by props and lighting/colour. After choosing a feature, I then asked for a reason why. Comments for image revealed that the main image was dominating to the poster, catches attention and also insights the biggest theme of fear and danger than any other feature. I would then use this information in my piece.