This is an analysis of the results from the first questionnaire my partner and I handed out for our a2 media studies coursework.

1. Questionnaire One Analysis
For our a2 media studies coursework, one of the tasks we were
asked to complete is to carry out target audience research for my
promotional package in order to find out more about our audience,
and what they’d like to see in our work. This is my analysis of the
first questionnaire we completed. This questionnaire was handed
out to 20 people within our target audience, and varied a range of
open and closed questions.
Firstly, we asked the participants to tick a box confirming which
gender they were; this question allowed us to find out more about
our audience. The results for this question showed that there were
13 females and 7 males who took part. I have learnt from this that
the majority of people interested in watching a psychological horror
film are females; this helped with the planning of our trailer, as we
know that a female lead character would help the audience to
relate more.
Next, we asked the participants another closed question, getting
them to tick a box telling us which age category they fall under. We
gave participants the options of ’15-17’, ’18-20’, ’21-23’, ’24-26’,
and ‘27+’. However, we gave our questions out to mostly younger
people as they fit in with our target audience more. For this
question, I found out that eight of the twenty taking part in the
questionnaire was aged 15-17, seven were aged 18-20, four were
aged 21-23 and only one was aged 24-26. This question revealed
that our work should be aimed at older teenagers, as they’re the
ones who’re going to be more interested in our film.
For question three, we explained to the participants what a
psychological horror is, as they may be unsure of the specific
definition. After the explanation, we asked them ‘how often do you
watch psychological horrors?’ This was another closed question,
with the options of ‘never’, ‘weekly’, ‘monthly’ and ‘yearly’. For this
question, we found that 5 people watch them weekly, 8 people
watch them monthly, and 7 people watch them yearly. From this
question, I found out how popular psychological horrors are with
the target audience. I found that most people watch them weekly
or monthly; this would mean they’d be genre-savvy, so sticking to
conventions would be successful for our film.

2. Question four was an open ended question, allowing the audience
to write any answer they wanted. We asked participants ‘What is it
you like about these horrors?’ This question was asked to get their
opinions on psychological horrors; there were a variety of answers,
but the most common said that they’re intellectually stimulating
and make you think, the tension and suspense, the jump scares,
and the fact that they’re true to real life so they become more
scared. I have learnt from this question what should be included in
our trailer in order for our audience to want to watch the film.
Next, we asked how much money the audience would spend on a
movie magazine. We gave the participants choices, as seen
below.
This question would help with our planning for our magazine, as
we’d know what price range we’re working with. Results for this
questionnaire revealed that 5 participants had picked ‘£0-99p’, 4
had put ‘£1-1.99’, 9 would pay “£2-2.99’ and 2 would pay ‘£3-3.99’.
By asking this question and analysing the results, I found that our
magazine should be prices between £2 – 2.99 as this is the result
that most of our target audience picked; if we priced it £3 or over,
our target audience would be less likely to purchase our magazine.
These results have met my expectations and ideas as I believe
that my audience would not want to spend this amount of money
on a magazine.
Question six asked our target audience ‘What features in a film
trailer persuade you to watch the movie?’ This was an open ended
question, allowing audiences to give any answer; we decided to do
this to ensure that we get the best results, without limiting
participants to certain choices. The most popular answers to this
question were ‘the storyline’, ‘jump scares’, ‘antagonist tease’ and
‘the music’. From this question, I have learnt the most important
features that should be included in our horror film trailer in order to
attract our target audience. This will influence my research and
planning and our practical work as we now have clear ideas as to
what to look for in existing texts, along with what to include in our
trailer.
The next question asked ‘Do you prefer the main character to be
male or female? Why?’ Again, we left this as an open ended

3. question in order to get the most reliable and accurate results from
our target audience. Out of the 20 participants, 9 said they’d prefer
to see a female antagonist/protagonist as they can relate to the
character more and find it interesting to see things from a female
perspective. 4 participants said they’d prefer a male main
character due to stereotypical ideas of males being stronger and
dominant. Lastly, 7 participants said they didn’t mind because it
doesn’t matter to them which gender the main character is. From
these results, my partner and I decided that our main character
should be female, in order to follow conventions from the
psychological horror sub-genre, and because most of our target
audience said female.
A large part of horror films is ensuring that you address the
audience’s fears in order to get a reaction from them. With this in
mind, we next asked the audience ‘What is your worst fear?’ By
asking this question, we hoped to find out more about our target
audience’s fears in order for us to address them in our trailer. For
this question, we gathered a large variety of answers, with the
most common being, ‘family death’, ‘loneliness’, ‘the paranormal’,
and ‘blood/gore’. From this, we have learnt that we need to
address these aspects throughout the promotional package.
Although psychological horrors do not largely feature blood and
gore, we will address this fear slightly, but not base our whole film
on it. However, death of a family member and loneliness will link
into our narrative, meaning we can address the audience’s fears,
and increase their fear whilst watching the trailer/movie.
Question nine asked our target audience ‘what are your top 3
favourite horror movies?’ We asked this question to find out what
films our target audience like in order to find out what film’s we
should use as inspiration. When looking at the results, we were
rewarded with a large variety, so we picked out the answers that
appeared the most; ‘Insidious’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Annabelle’, ‘Orphan’
and ‘SAW’. I think that the target audience enjoy these films
because many of them include children being the antagonists; this
creates fear for the audience as children are typically seen as
sweet and innocent. Also, Saw is unique to different films, and
includes a lot of gore, showing why it is such a popular franchise.
However, although ‘The Shining’ and ‘Orphan’ are both
psychological horrors and will be used as inspirations for our work,
they don’t fit into our narrative as well as other films, such as
‘Black Swan’.

4. For the final question, question ten, we asked ‘which of the
following influences you most in deciding to watch a film?’ We
gave participants three boxes, and asked them to tick one of them;
‘film poster’, ‘trailer’, or ‘magazine’. This question allowed us to find
out which of our pieces will have the most influence on our
audience, to ensure we make this piece a priority. When analysing
the results from this, we found that only 5 people thought posters
influenced them most and 15 people said the trailer. Surprisingly,
none of our target audience chose the magazine as being the most
influential. From these results, my partner and I concluded that the
trailer will need to include the most information on our film, e.g.
release date, as this is the piece that our audience will be most
influenced by.
Overall, from this questionnaire we have learnt more about how to
appeal to our target audience, for example, what aspects of horror
should be included in our trailer, and how to appeal to our
audience’s fears. We also found out that our trailer will be the most
influential piece, as well as learning more about our target
audience.