The document analyzes audience surveys conducted to inform the development of a student horror film project. It summarizes the key findings from each survey, including that supernatural, psychological and comedy genres are most preferred; dolls, masks and knives tend to frighten audiences; and audiences want an unresolved ending that leaves things open to interpretation. The surveys also provided guidance on poster design preferences and narrative elements audiences find appealing in horror films.

1. ANALYSING OUR
AUDIENCE SURVEYS

2. Audience Survey
• We conducted 4 surveys assigned to all 4 of our group members
• This was to engage with our target audience and see what they enjoy in horror films so we can
get a hint to what to put in our film. Our target audience consist of 17-30 year olds.
• Taslima – what do you prefer in horror films? (1st survey conducted)
• Farheen – Film Poster (2nd survey conducted)
• Tasnim – Film Narrative (3rd survey conducted)
• Nuzhat – Radio Trailer (4th survey conducted)

3. 1st Audience Survey – What do you
prefer in a horror film?
• One of the first questions I asked was what sub-genre of horror did our audience prefer, and by
the results the vast majority enjoyed supernatural, psychological and comedy.
• This helped us decide our genre for our film and to do a hybrid across both supernatural and
psychological for our horror film.
• We also asked what type of props tended to frighten our
target audience and the top 3 items they chose were dolls,
masks and knives. Thus helping us to choose to have a doll
and a knife featured in our film.

4. 1st Audience Survey – What do you
prefer in a horror film?
• Another question I asked was what our audiences favourite horror film was and why, and this
was because we wanted to know what our audience like so we can make it as good as that film
and have some similarities towards it.
• One of our respondents answered back with “One of my favourite horror films is Sinister
because it involves young children which is also creepy and it integrates possession and murder
as well which is cool”. This helped us identify what type of properties to have in our film to
resemble this horror film and know what themes to put in our movie.
• Another important question we asked was if our audience wanted a disequilibrium at the end of
a horror film, and the results were very close, as 47% said no and 52% said yes. But the majority
won, so it was decided that our film was to have a disequilibrium and the end was to be left to
the audiences imagination.

6. 1st Survey – What do you prefer in horror
films?
• We also asked why our audiences enjoy watching horror films and we found from their answers
that many of them loved the thrill and feeling adrenaline from watching horror films. Moreover,
one respondent wrote “Because it helps me deal with fears without putting myself at risk” and
with our horror story about FGM we decided it will help some of our fellow audiences, also
being such a chilling and horrifying subject it may give them the “adrenaline” they like to feel
when watching horror films.

7. 2nd audience survey - What colours do
you associate with horror movie posters?
We asked this question to find out what colours our
audience associates horror with so we could have an
idea when it came to creating our own poster.
Everyone who partook in the survey said that they
mostly associate black with horror with red coming in
as a close second. We can understand why they would
generally associate black with horror as it represents
darkness and death. The colour pink was never chosen
as it is seen as a colour of intimacy and love rather
than horror. Red was also a popular choice as many
link it with blood and danger. Just over 70%of the
audience chose white as it can represent a bright light
or even ghosts.
The answers received were based on
stereotypes and popular horror posters
the audience have seen so when
designing our poster we need to think
about whether we want to stick to the
stereotypical horror film poster or if we
want to challenge this convention.

8. What's your favourite horror film poster?
and why?
• We asked this question so we could receive a basis of what our target audience watches and
what their eyes are drawn to in this aspect. Many of the posters chosen are
from quite popular horror
movies such as Sinister and
Annabelle as they consist of
dark colours and they set an
uneasy mood. A few others also
mentioned how dolls in posters
give them the shivers as its
quite ominous and ‘it gives
them shivers’. They have also
stated that they like it when
they can recognise that the
poster is portraying a horror
movie straight away.
This is helpful to us when we design our poster as we can take
ideas from these posters and we can find out what draws in our
audience.

9. Do you prefer the writing or the picture
to be dominant on a horror film poster?
This question was asked for the same purpose which
was to generate ideas for how to design our own
poster. The majority said that they prefer a picture to
be dominant on a poster and this may be because a
picture can give more of an insight into the plot of
the movie instead of the title. Also from previous
questions asked we found out that the majority's
favourite posters were ones where the image was
more dominant than the title or other words, this
could also be the reason for their choices. Around
26% chose the option of both which means that they
prefer both the title and image to be equal to each
other as they both hold importance to the narrative
of the film.

10. Does a horror films poster influence your
decision to watch it?
• We asked this to see how much of an impact our horror film poster would have on our audience
and whether or not they would base their decision of watching the film off the poster or not.
The majority chose the option of
sometimes. This means that a horror
film poster does play a role in whether
they want to watch the film or not but
sometimes it doesn’t play that much of
a large role.

11. Do you prefer horror film posters to be
portrait or landscape
Everybody who took the survey said that they prefer a horror film poster to be portrait rather
than landscape. This may be because horror films that are generally produced in western
countries have horror film posters that are portrait whereas in east Asian countries such as japan
some of their posters are landscape. our audience may have chosen portrait as it is familiar to
them. This helps us when designing our poster as we need to consider if it should be portrait
and landscape. Choosing portrait may be ideal as it is more common in Hollywood.

12. What do you think the primary/ dominant
image on the horror poster should be?
• The majority answered doll for this
question. This fits in with previous
questions where people have said that
their favourite horror poster was for
Annabelle which had the doll of
Annabelle portrayed on the front. Some
others specified included a doll and
hands, specifically a hand holding a doll
or something similar. We can take this
into consideration and think about how
our film involves a child and we can
have a child's hand and a doll. A hand
and knife alone were not popular within
our target audience so that’s something
we have to take in account.

13. Do you prefer posters with a lot of
writing (includes release dates/ratings
etc)?
• This question also coincides with the question
abut whether the audience enjoyed the image
or words to be dominant on a horror film
poster. The majority answered no. This is
understandable as many people take quick
glances at posters they don’t sit there and
read all the words and contemplate what they
mean. We will bear this in mind when
sketching our poster and make sure not to
include too much writing as it is something
our target audience does not particularly
enjoy.

14. 3rd survey-Film Narrative survey
• We asked 10 females and 10 males
to answer these questions as we
want our film to appeal to girls and
boys .
• This way we can get a insight of
what both genders like and want as
part of a narrative.
• We distributed these surveys to the
age group of 15 and upwards as we
aim to target this specific age
group.

15. What is your favourite opening scene of
a horror film and why?
From these answers we can see that all of these
openings are unique and aren’t typical
openings.
For example one respondent answered saying
they like how the film “don’t breathe” showed a
shot of the aftermath of events which
happened, then went onto showing how the
chaos occurs. They felt this was “clever” and
“interesting”. Another person answered saying
they like how the conjuring began with a black
screen but with a conversation at the
background.
My group and I want to be able to make a
opening which immediately grabs the attention
of our target audience like these examples
above

16. Do you prefer when normality is
restored at the end of a horror film or
it’s left unresolved?
• We asked this question to gain a idea of what
our target audience want as a ending of our
horror film.
• 40% of people said they would prefer when
normality is restored at the end of the film and
60% answered saying they like when it’s left
unresolved.
• Since the results were really close we furthered
our research and conducted a group interview
with a sample from our target audience. From
this we felt the majority preferred when
equilibrium isn’t resolved. For that reason we’ve
decided normality isn’t going to be restored at
the end of our horror.

17. Do you like when horror narrative is
based on a conflict in society?
• 80% of people answered saying they like when a
horror is based on a conflict in society whereas 20%
said they don’t.
• Using this and our pitch feedback we’ve decided to
focus on the issue of female genital mutilation (fgm).
This is a serious issue and happens in some parts of
the world.
• Basing our film on a real life issue makes the film
more realistic and appealing to viewers.

18. What’s the best ending scene you’ve
seen in a horror movie and why?
• We want a ending which will shock the audience,
something that’s unpredictable. In order to know
what kind of endings our target audience like we
asked them to tell us the best one they’ve seen.
• One respondent answered saying they liked
insidious as the conflict wasn’t resolved, another
said the ring and the others as there was a
unexpected twist at the end.
• Therefore we decided to end with our
protagonist turning into a antagonist and hinting
at the fact she’s gong to conduct fgm on her
adopted sibling. We’ll hint at this idea rather
than showing it as we want to leave it for the
audiences interpretation

19. What is your favourite storyline of
horror film and why?
• Getting to know what horror narrative our target
audience like enables my group and I to
understand how we can adapt our narrative to
make it appealing for our audience.
• Many respondent said they liked the film split as it
was freaky seeing the character have multiple
personalities. For this reason we've decided to
have our main character Madeline have a good
and bad side. There’ll be a fight between these
two different personalities. As well as this one
respondent said they also liked the film because
it’s based on a real issue in society: mental health.
This is another reason why we’ve decided to focus
on a real conflict in society

20. • One question we asked is do you like twists in a
horror narrative. As you can see 100% answered
yes.
• This clearly illustrates that our target audience
like when unpredictable events take place in
movies.
• For this reason we don’t want our film to have a
stereotypical story line. For example in most
horrors good wins. In our horror this won’t be he
case. I think most people expect happy ending.
Having a ending that’s not happy will be twist
for the audience.
Do you like twists in horror narrative?

21. Name a horror film narrative you dislike
and why you dislike it
• To make our horror film interesting we need
to know why people dislike some existing
narratives of horrors, so we can try to avoid
what they dislike about narratives.
• One respondent said they disliked the film
“hush because it took too long for
something to happen”.
• Therefore we feel its important we don’t
build suspense up so much that our
audience gets bored waiting for events to
unfold.
• Common answers were they didn’t like
narratives because they were “boring”. This
shows it’s vital for us to make our narrative
as exciting as possible for our audience.

22. Does the narrative of a horror influence
your decision of watching it?
• 95% of people said the narrative of a film
influences the decision of them watching a film.
• This portrays how important a narrative is for some
people. The story that unfolds in the film is what
engages and attracts people to a film.
• This survey has helped my group and I adapt our
story line to make it more appealing and likable for
our target audience.

23. 4th Survey- Radio Trailers
• One of the questions I asked the audience was
‘what sound effects in a horror movie make it
movie scary’
• By the outcome I found that majority of people
said they find screams the scariest, also laughs.
• A member of our audience also commented that
they find silence and lullabies scary. This will
help when editing the sound of our film as we
will take this into consideration.

24. 4th Survey- Radio Trailers
• Another question I asked was whether they like sound effects in
a movie, 88% votes yes and commented “Makes movie much
scarier”. Another comment was that it adds to the “horror
atmosphere”.
• I also asked the target audience what was their favourite horror
movie trailer based on sounds.
• 5 said their favourite was The Conjuring (2013)- this movie is
slightly similar as it involves young children to ours so this will
help.

25. 4th Survey- Radio Trailers
• My question 6 was asking the audience whether they like music
in horror movie trailers.
• The results were very close as 55% said yes and 44% no. From
this we will decide as group if we choose to add music.
• I asked the audience if voice is important in a
radio advert. Majority said yes.
• When planning our radio trailer we will ensure we
add the things that our target audience said they
like for example voice.

26. 4th Survey- What do you think a horror
movie trailer should include?
• My last question asked the audience what they
think a horror movie trailer should definitely
include.
• Many said it should include sound effects and
sounds that relate to the plot of the movie.
• One said in particular to not give everything
away in the trailer as with many trailers now and
does not make the movie as interesting.