The document summarizes the results of a questionnaire about audience preferences for a horror film. Key findings include: the target audience is evenly split between male and female; most are teenagers but 35% are older; over half are fans of horror and psychological horror is most popular; plot is the most important element for 55% and trailers most influence the decision to see a film. 65% said they would see the film based on the synopsis alone. Feedback praised the original plot but cautioned about religious aspects.

1. Questionnaire Analysis

2. What is your gender?
 The gender of our target audience is fairly even
with only a 10% difference between male and
female. This goes to show that our film should be
gender neutral, appealing to both genders
equally. We don’t want to ostracise any gender
by aiming is specifically at one and not the other
as to we intend to attract a mass audience.

3. What age are you?
 The majority of our audience that answered the
questionnaire are teenagers. However the fact that
35% of the responses were above 26 years old
shows that there is a large age range hat we need
to take into account when making the film. In order
to appeal to a large age demographic we need to
make sure the film is mature enough to attract the
slightly older audience. This also goes to show that
maybe a 15 certificate would be best as it means
that a wider audience could see our film.

4. How often do you watch films?
 In order to see how many people watch films, we
needed to ask this question. The fact that 60% of
people said they watch films weekly shows that
films are still popular and that making one would
still attract a large audience. It shows that our target
audience are interested in film.

5. Are you a fan of the horror genre?
 This question shows that 55% of people are fans
of the horror genre. This tells us that using
conventions of the genre will be beneficial as it
will be expected by over half of our target
audience. As 30% of people said they’re only
sometimes interested in horror, we need to make
sure that the trailer and poster is interesting
enough to attract this section of our audience. It’s
positive that only 15% of out target audience
aren’t a fan of the genre as it means we still have
a large audience that would be interested in our
film.

6. What attracts you to a horror film?
 These responses show us the most important things to
think about when making our film as it’s what the
audience look for when deciding to see a film. The
majority of responses (55%) say that plot is the thing
they look for. This means that we’ll have to focus a lot
on our plot to make it original. 35% of the audience
said it was important to them that a film included all of
the above which shows us that we should include a
variety of elements in our film in order to attract a
larger audience. As our film is fairly dark and specific
we will need to think more about what to include as
things like Dark Humour would not work as well in our
film so we need to make sure that the elements we do
include are to a high standard.

7. Do you have a favourite horror film? Why
is it your favourite?
 The various answers that we got in these
responses show that our target audience have
a mixed taste when it comes to the horror
genre. There is various psychological horrors
like The Shining and Donnie Darko as well as
classic horrors like The Exorcist. As this
question provided such a mixed result it
allows us to experiment taking different
elements from a variety of films to influence
our creative decisions. The majority of these
films are successful so taking influence from
them should work in our favour.

8. What was the last film you saw in the
cinema?
 The majority of the responses for this question were
recent films which suggests that a lot of our audience
frequently go to the cinema. It’s also clear that our target
audience are attracted to mainstream films like Spectre
and Mockingjay Part 2 and that they had successful
marketing schemes as they were the most popular films
in our responses. Whilst not many of the choices are
horror films, a few of the films do have darker undertones
like Mockingjay and Last Witch Hunter.

9. What kind of marketing influences your
decision on which films you go and see?
 These responses go to show that we need to
work hard on our trailer as it’s the thing that
influences the majority of our audience to go
and see a film. However it also important to
think about the posters and other forms of
marketing as various types of marketing means
that we would have a larger reach, allowing
more people to be influenced to go and see
our film.

10. What is your favourite sub-genre of
horror?
 This questions tells us the most popular sub-genre of
horror. Our horror ‘Rapture’ is a psychological horror
with some paranormal elements. The fact that 35% of
responses said that psychological was their favourite
sub-genre of horror means that they would be
interested in our film. Including elements from other
sub-genres just increase our mass audience.

11. After reading the following synopsis,
would you be inclined to see this film?
 This is a positive result for us as 65% of
people said they would see out film, which
shows that our plot alone has interested
over half of the audience. As 30% said
maybe it shows that we need to make our
trailer and posters good in order to
convince those people that our film is worth
seeing.

12. What do you like/dislike about the
synopsis?
 This question is the most helpful as was
specifically about our idea and allowed the
people who took our survey to give their
opinion on it. This meant we could get
advice on the elements of our film that may
need to be developed. It was helpful to hear
that people thought our synopsis was
original and interesting and that the plot
and characters interest them, as that was
what has already been proved to attract
audiences to horror films. It was also helpful
to get insight on the religious aspects of our
synopsis as it’s a controversial topic so goes
to show that we should take caution.