Audience Research Results Analysis - Questions 11-15

Graphs: 11-15

11. Which colour scheme do you find most effectively suits a horror film?

• Bright (Yellow, Orange etc.)
• Dark ( Dark red, Black, Grey etc.)

42 people = Dark

3 people = Bright

With 42 out of the 45 people choosing ‘Dark’ as being the most effective colour scheme, we are going to take this on board when designing our poster and magazine cover. The generic features of horror movies do consist of dark colours and through research I have found this out. With knowing what out target market expect from the horror genre we can even use this in our trailer and the editing, as we can use special effects in making the trailer look more dark and gloomy which adds a scary effect to the trailer. We have decided on a dark colour scheme for our magazine cover and posters, using colours such as red, black, and grey as this will reveal the genre of the film more clearly. As the dark colours have connotations of danger, blood and death which contrast with what happens in our trailer. It is very rare that a horror film would have bright colour scheme unless it was a spoof/comedy horror, and as our subgenre psychological/slasher we have decided to stick to the generic conventions and will be using a dark colour scheme for our creations.

12. Which pace do you feel is most effective in a horror film trailer?
• Slow-pace
• Fast pace
• Mixture of both slow and fast

42% = Mixture of both

27% = Slow pace

31% = Fast pace

From this result I see that nearly half of the people we asked think that a combination of fast and slow pace in a film trailer is the most effective. And with slow pace getting the least votes we can now use these result when editing the pace of our trailer. This has been useful for us as now we can use a combination of the two types of pacing to create a better effect. As we can use a slow pace to engage the audience then switch to a faster pace to shock the audience. As a faster pace usually builds up tension and adrenaline and therefore we can use both to our advantage in engaging the audience as well as making them scared. Horror movies use pace to have an effect on the audience and through the horror trailers I watched as part of my research I noticed that they started of slow and moved towards a faster pace gradually as the trailer went on to a shock ending to frighten viewers.

13. Which of the following would you like to see more of in a horror teaser trailer?
• Special Effects
• Action
• Captions

45% = Special effects

31% = Action

24% = Captions

In our trailer we are using all three of these options. However we are using the results we got to help us on deciding on how much of each aspect to use. From the results we got for this question we can see that the special effects used in trailers are the most important and therefore in our editing we have researched different special effects to use that will work in our trailer and create the biggest effect. Using Final Cut Pro we can experiment with the different effects and using tutorials on YouTube to find the most suitable ones for our trailer. We are going to use captions our trailer as captions can help to tell the story, as with the footage we have it may be difficult to understand our trailer and we have many random action shots. Which we have used to reflect the personality of the character. So with 31% of the people we asked thinking that action is an important features we have also included this in our trailer, this way it contains all three features so then therefore there is a bigger chance of more people being impressed with it.

14. Which type of killer would be more appealing to you in a horror film?
• Female = 15 people
• Male = 11 people
• Monster = 9 people
• Spirit/Ghost = 10 people

This result has been beneficial to us as our trailer only features a female, and with the highest vote being ‘Female’ we have had reassurance about the type of character we used. When looking at different horror movies ranging from slasher to thriller I noticed that the majority of killers were men or monster like creatures. So by using a female as the only character in our trailer we can focus the whole trailer around her which is different and goes against the generic conventions of a teaser trailer. Although in our trailer we do not see the character actually killing anyone, the shots and props we use show that she is the main character in the “film” and therefore the audience will know it is based around a women. In my opinion real killers (men and women) are more effective than spirits/monsters. My group would also agree and that’s why we decided not to create any creatures to use in the trailer as simple is more effective and realistic. So these results have gone in our favour as when making our treatment we decided to use a female killer so when we got the results back and analyzed them we were happy to see ‘Female’ get the most votes although it was close between male and female.

15. Would dialogue in a teaser trailer better your understanding of the content?
• Yes = 21 people
• No = 24 people

This question also had close results, and this was a particular question we wanted to find out the answer to as we were contemplating on what sound to use for example dialogue, soundtrack or voice over. When filming we didn’t film any dialogue as we were also worried about how the clarity of the sound would be when we started editing. We watched a few teaser trailers and notices that soundtracks were very popular and a lot of teaser trailers use soundtracks over the trailer as dialogue may reveal too much and teaser trailers are not meant to reveal much and we wanted to follow this. However with 21 people thinking dialogue will help them to understand a trailer more, we have now been considering a voice over. This is also due the fact of us having random shots which could be unclear to some of what is going on. So we are taking into consideration everyone’s opinion and decided to come up with an option in between, so if we do use a voice over we a re hoping it will help people to understand our trailer better.