The focus group provided feedback on horror film trailers, posters, and magazines to help inform the creation of a promotional package. Participants found the "Paranormal Activity-Ghost Dimension" trailer most frightening due to its use of jump scares, children as evil carriers, and tense music. The poster for "The Conjuring" was most appealing for its dark, mysterious appearance and use of shadows. Feedback indicated that effective elements in horror include music, jump scares, evil forces, and atmosphere. Participants preferred magazines that emphasized visual appeal over written content. The feedback highlighted jump scares, imagination-fueled mystery, and lack of gore as effective approaches for the promotional materials.

1. Focus group results
Within this focus we asked our four participants a series on questions regarding their
opinions on filmtrailers, posters, and magazines. We asked these questions to determine
what our target audience would be interested in seeing in our promotional package, and to
find out the most effective ways of making our media texts a success. We included four
females’ ages seventeen and upwards in our group as after listening to their personal film
preferences we felt that they related to our target market. In the clip posted of our focus
group you are able to see each person’s reaction to each trailer as they are being watched
displaying clearly where the most effectively frightening parts of the trailer are.
To begin the focus group, we asked the group to watch the trailers for three horror movies
and for them to decide which one is most effective, and why. The first one we showed them
was Cabin in the Woods, then The Woman in Black, and finally Paranormal Activity-Ghost
Dimension. We chose to use these three trailers as they are all within the paranormal genre
and also all have a similar theme which we would like to incorporate into our own trailer.
The feedback indicated that ‘Paranormal Activity-Ghost Dimension’ was the most
frightening film due to the use of jump scares, children being used as carriers of evil and also
the tensional music used.
We then asked members which film poster made them most want to go and see the movie.
Here we included the poster for Insidious 3, The Conjuring and a Nightmare on Elm Street.
These three posters share an element of mystery and something terrifying not being fully
visible to the human eye which is what we wanted to present in our media texts. Here most
members of the group decided they liked The Conjuring film poster the most as it is very
dark and mysterious in appearance, and the use of shadows was commented on as being
highly effective.
After this we asked for their opinion on what makes a film most enjoyable for them to
watch, and gave them the options of music, jump scares, evil forces and atmosphere as we
feel that these are some of the key parts of making up a terrifying piece of text. Our group
mentioned each one of these as an important factor in the film, meaning that all of these
factors put together would make a highly effective trailer.
We then asked which content they would find most interesting to read in a film magazine to
get an idea of what our audience values as something exciting and worthwhile reading
within a magazine. We included interviews, exclusives, posters and the cover image as the
four valued factors. While everyone said that each of these factors are important, the
emphasis on the important of visuals was made clear, meaning that if the magazine looked
visually exciting they would be more likely to buy it. After this we asked them to name their
horror filmand explain why they like it as this way we can get an idea of what really stands
out and is viewed as particularly memorable in a movie, in order to get some inspiration for
our own. Most participants agreed the paranormal films were their favourite. As well as this
‘Final Destination’ was mentioned, which also has an element of the supernatural within it
as character are not in control of their mysterious deaths.

2. We asked if there anything you would deem as ‘too much’ or ‘inappropriate’ to watch in a
horror film, and if yes please specify, as we felt that this would help indicate what we should
avoid including in our trailer. The majority of people said no to this, though it was said that
unnecessary gore and blood could be seen as inappropriate. We then asked participants for
their preference on magazine covers and why, showing three film magazine posters which
were featuring horror movies. The three magazine covers we used were Fangoria, Empire
and Total Film. Each had different preferences on this, depending on whether they liked a
lot of colour or for it to be more organised and simple with the design. This displays how
everyone’s unique, personal style.
Overall, this feedback has shown us that in movie trailers one of the most effective features
in making the audience want to watch the movie is when there are effective jump scares. In
order to achieve this the plot in the trailer has to draw the audience in enough for them to
be surprised when something terrifying happens, which is something we intend to
incorporate into our own work. Posters which have a fairly simple design and which leave a
lot of the terror up to the viewer’s imagination is a feature which members of the group
were drawn to, which again will try to be expressed through our own work. In terms of the
narrative and characters involved in our trailer, we intend to not use a lot, if any, gore a we
feel (like those in our focus group) that this would be unnecessary. Along with this there will
be a lot left up to the audience’s imagination making it increasingly terrifying, and perhaps
some childish objects used to add to the scare factor. With our magazine will try and make it
appeal to a range of different people’s individual styles as this will help it be viewed as more
attractive.