I wanted to ask an equal number of males and females in order to find out what both genders want, as this is my target audience. The number of males and females is almost equal, however I don't think this small difference will have a huge effects on my results.
Most people said that they preferred an orchestral score in a horror trailer. This may be because the music can change tones and suggestions very suddenly; a piece of music can be calm at the beginning of the trailer but then get louder or lower at scary moments, increase the shock response from a loud bang etc. Music from established artists can work sometimes to create a certain atmosphere, but I think this is preferencial for genres such as romantic comedy, not horror.
A large majority of my particpants preferred the human villain (the murderer). I established when I gave out the questionnaire that I meant which would be a scarier character, as my question was printed out quite vaguely. I think that the reason for this is because horror films play on the innate fears of society. Many people are very sceptical about other worldy phenomenons such as ghosts, vampires and aliens. The fact that many people find a human killer more scary is probably because it is more realist, and easier to invoke a personal fear that something bad could happen to them. The human killer is something that does occur in real life and the audience would have heard of examples, whereas ghost stories and alien stories usually recieve a response of disbelief.
Most people preferred a female main character, although quite a few participants still did like a male. I think the reason for the majority result is that females can often be portrayed as vulnerable and naive in the media; this makes better criteria for an audience to watch someone in a dangerous position and fear / panic for them. It is essential for an audience to empathise and sympathise with characters, which I think is easier to do with females.
All of these results are generally popular horror movies and I have seen most of them. I will remind myself of these films and try to include as many features as I can from these films. Many of these film include isolated settings, torture/gory deaths and mysterious/dehumanised murderers. Therefore, it seems that these are the features in horror films that scare an audience the most, therefore I aim to include these features in my trailer. Teenagers are a very common character victim group in these films.
The majority voted that they prefer to watch anonymous actors in horror films. In the general film industry, a huge amount of production costs will be paid to famous actors because it is well known that including these actors will attract a much larger audience and therefore larger revenue. However, I think this is not the case in the horror genre. A sense of realism and belief it the storyline very much amplifies the audience response of fear, therefore having unknown actors would allow the audience to believe more easily that the characters and the storyline is real. If a very successful actor is used, the audience may find it difficult to distinguish the character in the horror film from another role they have played.
Most people prefer a horror film to be shot on a tripod, with a smooth effect. This non - shaky effect on the footage is clearly much easier to see and the audience is suggested to be omniscient - they can see the plot happening from different angles, locations and points of view. However, I do think that some hand held camera technique in horror films is beneficial because this increases the sense of realism by far, thus increasing the fear response from the audience, which is one of the main aims of a horror film. From this feedback, I think I will shoot most of my film using a tipod but include a short amount of hand held camera, too.
Before I gave the paticipants I made sure that noone who never watched horror films filled out my questionnaire - this would be pointless. A huge majority of my participants watched horror flims at least once a month, therefore they will be very qualified to answer the questions reliably because they have a high exposure to horror films.
I intentionally asked a much larger number of people in the 19 - 25 age range to answer my questionaire because this is my main target audience. I did, however, still include participants from all age groups so that I could get an idea of what different groups of people prefer in horror trailers.
I will use this audience research to plan for my trailer and hopefully include the most popular features of horror films.
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