Servey Monkey - Target Audience Research
In the process of beginning our planning and research for our teaser trailer it was important for us as a group to establish what our target audience would be and what codes and conventions the audience expect to see in a horror genre. In order for us to gather the required information to proceed with planning and research it was essential for us to carry out a survey. We used survey monkey to achieve a more professional survey that could be easily sent and answered to by many people. An average of 69 participants took part in our survey with a total of 10 questions asked. As a group we were certain we wanted to produce a horror teaser trailer so we focused our survey on what elements the audience expected to see.
On a whole we gathered data form 96 people. 55% of the participants surveyed were females and 45% of the participants surveyed were male. Due to the fact that our data contained more results from females we had to bare in mind what we wanted to include in our teaser trailer as we wanted to make sure that it would appeal to both genders.
A target audience also referred to as niche audience are people who are fans of a particular genre or them. For films a target audience is key in defining what type of film should be produced and who it should be aimed towards. Our group decided that our target audience for our film would be rated 15 and above because it will contain disturbing scenes. We targeted our is trailer particularly at 16-21 year olds because from our audience feedback majority of the participants that took part in our survey were in this age range. Although our genre is horror we wanted it to be rated 15 because we wanted to gain a large audience. The 15 certificate is given to films that contain strong violence, foul language, graphic scenes, portrayal of sexual activity and strong references to sex. therefore Viewers under the age of 15 are not allowed to view the film.
The results obtained for the question 'How do Horror movies make you feel? showed that majority of the participants said when they watch Horror films they start to visualise scary images with a total of 18% of participants choosing this choice. 'Have nightmares' and 'unable to go to the toliet by yourself' were had the lowest number of participants with only 9% of the participants surveyed selecting these choices. One result that really struck us was that 17% of the participants surveyed said they feel nothing when they watch Horror films this was shocking as we thought majority of the participants would feel something as horror genre are meant to install the sense of fear and terror in viewers. Through the results we had gathered we decided we wanted to make our trailer very unique and different to usual horror films as we wanted our audience to be off their seats with terror therefore as a group we decided what we wanted to include and how we wanted to achieve this keeping in mind that we decided our budget was £50.
The results obtained from the question 'How often do you watch Horror movies?' showed us that only 12% surveyed watched horror films every week and with a total of 25% people surveyed watched horror films every month and 20% watching a horror film . Majority of the audience with a total of 43% said that they watch horror films 'other' times of the year. This was very interesting to discover as not many of the audience watch a great deal of horror films maybe because they don't appeal to them or because of other extraneous reasons. Therefore we decided to make our teaser trailer appealing to audience as much as possible so that audiences would want to watch it. We also had to keep in mind that not everyone likes horror films and that we were targeting a niche audience.
During our planning and research stages we all had very different takes on what sub genre of horror we wanted to achieve. We decided to ask audiences 'what sub genre of horror appeals to you the most' majority of the participants with a total of 33% said they would like to see a comedy sub genre. As a group we weren't too keen on doing a comedy as we felt it didn't fit in with any of our ideas or expectations. Supernatural horror was the 2nd most voted sub genre with a total of 24% this appealed to us as it fitted in with our ideas and correlated well with our initial ideas. We also decided to include elements of psychological horror as it would create a more challenging project and idea.
Another key question we wanted to find out was about the type of characters that would best fit the Horror genre the question was ' which characters do you think best fit in a horror genre? The data from the audience feedback showed that majority (26%) of the participants thought demons/devils was the most effective character however as a group we thought having a demon as the main character in the trailer would be too cliché and that is an issue we greatly wanted to avoid hence, when choosing the characters we decided to still incorporate a demon however we wanted to include only one shot of the demon so that not too much of its appearance is given away to the audience, keeping the suspense of the movie. To again a further understanding of what the audience wanted to see in horror we asked participants to comment on their opinions. ( upload comments here ) After analysing the comments one thing that was common amongst the individuals was the feeling of suspense and making the trailer scary this really helped us in deciding key elements that would install fear.
A good location was essential for our teaser trailer, it was important for us to make sure that the setting fitted with the Horror genre well. We asked 'What setting in a horror film creeps you out the most' we gave a total of 6 options which were: haunted house, graveyard, basement, lab, abandoned hospitals and forest. The majority of the audience said a haunted house with a total of 26% participants followed by a graveyard setting. This greatly impacted us on the locations we wanted to use. Based on our audience feedback we decided to use a cemetery, haunted house and a forest. We used a total of 3 cemeteries which included Isleworth, Heston & Hounslow cemetery as we thought filming in a cemetery for the for the most part of the teaser trailer would really highlight the genre making it clear to the audience what genre it is without confusing the audience. Furthermore the use of the cemetery helped us to create an eerie atmosphere and truly capture the essence of the horror genre. We used a haunted house and forest so that the audience could get a further understanding of the plot as using a variety of location makes the teaser trailer seem interesting and mysterious.
'Does silence in horror movies scare you?' this question was very interesting as we weren't too sure if we wanted to include scenes of the trailer with no soundtrack or dialogue. Majority of the participants with a total of 79% said that silence was effective in scaring individuals. This impacted us quite a lot as we wanted to include soundtracks to build up the suspense and so we can establish the genre straight away. We decided that dialogue in the teaser trailer wasn't effective enough in creating excitement therefore we kept dialogue to a minimum. Throughout the trailer we wanted to keep the soundtrack loud and dramatic to create a sister atmosphere for when we reveal Lilith (demonic figure). We wanted silence in this scene of the teaser trailer so we could create suspense and hopefully create the feelings of horror and terror.
We wanted to find out if people enjoyed horror films on their own or with the company of other because we felt if people watch horror films with others they are less likely to find the film effective in creating terror and horror. Our question was 'Who do you watch horror movies with? majority of the audience said they watched horror films with there friends with a total of 42% followed by siblings with a total of 16%. We wanted to make sure that our teaser trailer appealed to a group of people we therefore decided show our trailer to a group of audiences so we could get feedback from them before we uploaded our final teaser trailer.