Questionnaire results

Our first question was regarding gender, we used this to establish which gender would be more drawn to the subject of horror films. Out of 21 answers, 11 were men and 1o were women, this could show that both sexes have an interest in horror films, despite the fact that all our research implies that horror films are generally targeted at men, not at both sexes; this influenced our decision of which sexes to represent in our horror films, we decided to have equal male and female characters to appeal to both sexes. 

Our Second question focused on the age of our target audience, our research implied that the primary audience of the horror genre was people under the age of 35 but we decided that we wanted to aim our film at a slightly younger audience as we are more likely to understand our own age group, to target this age group we used a lower range of ages ranging from 12-28 so we could understand which age exactly we should target.  While we received a few results of over 28 year olds, this is not the target audience we intended to focus on. 71.43% of our results were between the ages of 16 and 18, this was our ideal age for our target audience, as my group fits inside this age bracket and we understand it most. In response to our results we chose to make  5 of 6 characters within this age bracket and 1 character is in the younger age bracket which makes up 9.52% of our results. 

A majority of our results said that they enjoyed watching horror films, however 38.1% of the results said they did not enjoy the horror genre, when asked what genres they preferred, they mostly answered with lighter, happier genres like comedy or romance, showing that they were not the chosen demographic for this genre. 

When asked what they object to most in the horror genre, 28.57% of our results stated that they disliked sudden movements or shocks, 19.05% said they disliked violence or gore and 9.52% found human aspects of sociopaths or cannibals disturbing. A majority of our results answered other, which was a fault in the design of our questionnaire, which made the question available for people who said they enjoyed the horror genre. If I were to survey our target audience again, I would be careful to fix this design fault or use a different survey system to accommodate this. 

The most common answer was Apocalyptic horror, this is not a traditionally popular sub genre of horror, however a majority of the people answering the questions were between the ages of 16 and 18, the generation where zombies and vampires are generally most popular. Other popular genres are psychological thrillers, showing that a percentage of young people appreciate well thought out horror films, which make them think about the characters. Another treasured sub genre is slasher, showing that the younger age range is less squeamish about gore and violence than some preceding generations. Found footage subculture was also favoured, showing an audience interest in suspense and the possibility of the stories they see being true. The last large percentage is for Teen Horror, this shows that teenagers prefer watching people their own age, we will use this information in our horror film to attract out target audience by featuring teenage actors.

66.67% of our answers said they found a male villain more terrifying than a female, this could be because our society presents women as weak, feeble and lacking of authority, while men are presented as strong, powerful and menacing. This could also be because men present a further physical threat, that women do not. 

71.43% of our answers show that audiences find young villains more intimidating, this is likely due the physical threat element of the characters.  However 28.57% say that older villains are more terrifying due to their experience and knowledge making them more of an intellectual threat. 

Our results also state that masked/mysterious villains are more scary as the audience don't know which characters to trust and have less knowledge of events to come. We will use this information in our horror film opening, to create suspense and hysteria.

Our results also show that audiences respond to demons, ghosts and sprits with the most fear, however this is less relevant to our film opening as we do not specify or show our villain in our film opening. 

This shows that a majority of male audiences relate to young, handsome protagonists, even if unlike them in age or appearance, while women empathise with both innocent young women and older, more intelligent women, while men do not empathise with older, more experienced characters. 

This shows us that isolated locations are considered more scary for the target audience, as it leaves no opportunity for help or escape. We used this information in our location decisions for our horror film opening. 

Our Survey results regarding music show clear  majorities, with 100% of the answers saying that music is important, making suitable music for our opening essential.  Our results say that a slow tempo in a low pitch are more effective in building tension and suspense, rather than fast, high pitched music. Our results also show that layered instruments are more effective as they make a mysterious, haunting sound, along with this 66.67% of our answers said that strings were the most effective set of instruments for building tension. Our results also show that a crescendo or gradual increase in volume is the most effective in building tension. We hope to use this information in our music selection for the opening.

Our results clearly show that sound effects are vital with 100% of our answers saying sound effects are important, we intend to use this information to improve our opening, with sound effects to make the gore in our scene more dramatic and build suspense with the air raids siren sound effect. 

Similar results to the sound effects were received regarding lighting, showing us that we need to focus on how we light our indoor scenes and the time of day at which we should film our outside footage.

Dark lighting was voted as more effective by a majority, this could be more effective for building suspense as the audience cannot see what is coming building tension and suspense. When we asked why this was some of our responses were...

"Can hide baddies or things happening until the last minute. Human fear of the dark is fairly inbuilt!" "Associated with death" "Connotations of death etc."                                               These results show that they way we watch films are changing, less people are which films in the  cinema or on television and its more common for people to watch films online or on streaming  sites like Netflix. When asked if this would change depending on the horror genre, the most common answer was no because they wouldn't want to see horror in the cinema in any case.

     

When asked how much they value the production company of a film, the range was between 3 and 6 showing that, while it can help influence a person to watch a film, it would cause someone to see or avoid seeing a film.