In any media product, it is essential to gain feedback from others. It benefits the quality and viewability of the product greatly. Collecting and analysing our information was incredibly vital to crafting our final products and ancillary tasks.
We created a survey on Surveymonkey, where we could create our own questions as we felt appropriate and useful to our research. This could be distributed easily through e-mail and Facebook to our friends, most of whom are male teenagers, who are often recognised as horror’s primary key demographic. We had to ensure that these questions were able to offer as useful information as possible, and so the questions were categorised into qualitative and quantitative categories, where they can answer the quantitative ones using boxes (E.g: Age, gender), and answer the others by writing their own answers (E.g: favourite horror films). These questions and answers we received are displayed below.
ADD QUESTIONS AND GRAPH RESPONSES
Upon analysis of this data, we could deduce vital information about our target audience and what they would like to see in their horror films.
SettingPeople preferred their horrors to be set in unclear, unknown places. Because of this we decided to place our film in a generic church with a graveyard, however the name of the church, it’s geographical location or any memorable aspects of the church are left anonymous. Additionally a sense of entrapment was attempted with the use of the graveyard.
Following our first cut of the trailers, we showed ours to the rest of the class and each person gave feedback on what they did or didn’t like about everybody else’s trailers. They offered feedback on how we could fix it, and since the class also consists of our primary demographic, we took very careful note of their thoughts. A common suggestion was to fix the organisation of shots and maybe trim some down as they go on for too long and almost ruined the rhythm and pace of the trailer. Initially we felt that the shots worked in such an order where the arrival at the church is the penultimate shot since it juxtaposes the chaos that previously ensued, and would make the audience want the characters not to enter. The shot was also drawn out to a long length so that we could view the whole entrance and see it as inevitable that they are going to enter. After changing this, we agreed that our trailer looked far scarier and more professional in the way suggested by the post-creation feedback.
We created a survey on Surveymonkey, where we could create our own questions as we felt appropriate and useful to our research. This could be distributed easily through e-mail and Facebook to our friends, most of whom are male teenagers, who are often recognised as horror’s primary key demographic. We had to ensure that these questions were able to offer as useful information as possible, and so the questions were categorised into qualitative and quantitative categories, where they can answer the quantitative ones using boxes (E.g: Age, gender), and answer the others by writing their own answers (E.g: favourite horror films). These questions and answers we received are displayed below.
ADD QUESTIONS AND GRAPH RESPONSES
Upon analysis of this data, we could deduce vital information about our target audience and what they would like to see in their horror films.
Age
Our data found that most people who took our survey fitted into the “15-20” age range, which conforms to the typical horror genre demographic age band. This enabled us to know that we were asking the right people, and that it should be rated 15 at least, so that all who took the survey could watch it.Gender
Typically, the horror genre audience consists of predominantly males, whilst our survey contained many female responses, and the balance was almost equal, which let us know that our film would have to adhere to suit the standards of both genders.Genre preference
Obviously, those surveyed enjoy rather than dislike horror films. This let us know approximately the ratio of potential viewers of our film. Whilst X amount took the survey, and Y amount enjoy horrors, we can presume that X out of Y people in this demographic may watch our product. It’s understandable that many people may have decided to not fill out our survey because they may not enjoy horror films. This was taken into account.
Frequency of watching horror films: It seems that many people watch films on a semi-regular basis, and so it could be suggested that the audience spectatorship is relatively high, and potentially successful.
Frequency of watching horror films: It seems that many people watch films on a semi-regular basis, and so it could be suggested that the audience spectatorship is relatively high, and potentially successful.
Preferred horror style
Clearly, the preferred styles of horror were psychological and thrillers. We attempted to utilise these styles in our work. Psychological aspects proved to be somewhat dominating in the trailer with the elements are there in the corner-of-the-eye images that occur during the quick cuts. In addition to this, our trailer was created as a slow, tension-building trailer wherein the audience expects something to eventually happen, whilst in actuality it doesn’t, adding to the psychological elements in a non-diegetic way, as well as the manipulation of speed throughout most of our shots. Our thriller aspects were also visible with the use of appearing from nowhere and a variety of reaction shots, maintaining suspense by lacking in what the reactions are invoked from.Setting
Favourite films
Whilst our preferred horror style responses consisted of “psychological” and “thriller”, we found that many of the films people preferred circled around gore and physical action, such as the Saw series and Dawn of the Dead. Death itself was focused on with the resurrection of the Monk and the graveyard. Furthermore, the Blair Witch Project was noted a couple of times and so we incorporated that with one of the characters dying whilst using handheld recording equipment.Style and Reasons
People said they watched horror films because they enjoy being scared. We took advantage of this in our trailer by slowly building up the tension throughout the trailer, whilst not having a heavily climactic moment, causing people to be scared or fearful for no particular reason. If they want the fear, they must see the film, which furthers the above psychological point.Following our first cut of the trailers, we showed ours to the rest of the class and each person gave feedback on what they did or didn’t like about everybody else’s trailers. They offered feedback on how we could fix it, and since the class also consists of our primary demographic, we took very careful note of their thoughts. A common suggestion was to fix the organisation of shots and maybe trim some down as they go on for too long and almost ruined the rhythm and pace of the trailer. Initially we felt that the shots worked in such an order where the arrival at the church is the penultimate shot since it juxtaposes the chaos that previously ensued, and would make the audience want the characters not to enter. The shot was also drawn out to a long length so that we could view the whole entrance and see it as inevitable that they are going to enter. After changing this, we agreed that our trailer looked far scarier and more professional in the way suggested by the post-creation feedback.
You have spent most of this answer talking about your audience research rather than your audience feedback. It's fine to spend some time on this but the bulk of this answer needs to be about what you learnt about the successes and failures of your trailer by showing it to members of your target audience. You should consider your trailer both as an example of the horror genre and also as a trailer. Look at the conventions of both areas and explain those areas that your target audience felt was successful and those areas that they felt were not so good.
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