After handing out my questionnaire to 25 people I put the results into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and created pie charts from this to show my results clearly. Some of the questions were open, inviting participants to write their own answer, and therefore I couldn't put these into pie charts. I have taken the results of these questions into account though and intend to use all of the results to help me make decisions throughout the development of my coursework.
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| spreadsheet with results |
Most of the people who answered the questionnaire were in the 17-21 age bracket because this is my target audience. Therefore the results below predominantly reflect the views and opinions of this age group, becoming much more useful and relevant when I come to making my film trailer and accompanying poster and magazine cover.
In an interview that took place in 1964, Hitchcock was asked whether he aimed to scare men, women or both, to which he replied "Women because 80% of the audience in the cinema are women. Even if the house is 50/50, half men half women, a good percentage of the men have said to their girl, being on the make of course 'what do you want to see dear?'". I believe that this observation is rather true and therefore I shall endeavour to use this theory within my own work and aim to scare women more so than men.
This proved to be a good start as the majority of people asked do like horror films making my results exceedingly appropriate for my project.
Psychological horrors most definitely appear to be the firm favourite as opposed to any other sub-genre and due to this result my aim shall be to create a plot that surrounds the psychological theme. With this I am able to make it more naturalistic and believable as acting can be limited and there is no need for using tomato ketchup for gory scenes!
This result ties in nicely with the concept of psychological horror as suspense is a common feature of this genre. I believe that rather than having something obviously scary such as zombies, I will have something that represents something to be feared to keep the audience guessing such as a prop or sound effect.
As a unique plot and high 'scare factor' seems to be most important I believe I will have to really think about my ideas carefully so they don't become too cliched or familiar to an audience. The plot must contain a concept that has never really been seen before which could prove a problem as I must come up with a completely original idea. As far as the 'scare factor' is concerned I believe that testing out drafts of my film trailer on a small audience will help me decifer whether or not it is scary enough.
The fact that good acting and a strong plot are least important to an audience allows me to focus more on the camera shots and angles as opposed to who says what etc. I think this will save much time and deliberation however I will need to pay attention to location and setting more too in order to make sure the film trailer is still as successful and scary.
The reasons people said they prefer to watch horror movies at night-time, is purely because it makes for more scary viewing and atmosphere, putting even more emphasis on how important the 'scare factor' of the film is, and supporting answers to previous questons.
This results shows that I need to come up with something that won't upset people. Suggestions for inappropriate viewing included rape and child abuse, both sickening things that happen in reailty and therefore to portray this in a film would put many people off as the thought of such happenings isn't appealing at all, no matter how much someone likes horror films!
With films with 15 age certficate being most watched I have more of a guideline about what I can and can't include in a film trailer so I can aim to produce a film that would be of this rating. This means it has to be very scary.
The final question gave me a great response in that everyone finds out a bout films from trailers, posters an magazines. This means that each of my pieces have to be strong in order to advertise a film successfully so people would be enticed to watch it.
