The questionnaire results showed that psychological horror is the most popular subgenre. Most respondents were ages 16-20 and watched horror films with friends. Respondents had a low budget and preferred to download films digitally for under £5. Found footage was the preferred film style and spiders the top fear. The results will help shape the film to focus on psychological horror themes, include spiders, have friend protagonists and distribute digitally at low cost.

1. Questionnaire results
Units 2, 3, 22
By: Talia Vachman, Omer Muratoglu, Alistair Pearlman and Sonia
Filipa Soares-Eusebio

2. Aims and Purpose
The reason we conducted a questionnaire for our audience research is to
retrieve information about people’s preferences and the conventions/
types of elements found in horror films that they may either like or dislike.
This has been done in order to help us find our target audience and in turn
create a product that will draw in our audience.
The questionnaire was also a way to find out how to shape our product
using the audience feedback we got from people who took our survey as
a base for the ideas in our film.

3. Methods and Techniques
Our method of using a questionnaire to gather information allows us to
target a variety of different kinds of people from various backgrounds and
cultures, meaning that our data will be more open and have a wider
range of opinions regarding the Horror genre.
It also allows us to engage with our audience so that we have better
understanding of the kind of people that may potentially become the
target audience for our product and adjust our film to suit the target
audience better, therefore creating a more attractive product to engage
our audience with.

4. Methods and Techniques #2
This method is also time and cost effective and due to the collected
information being original data, it is very reliable too, easy to analyse and
to piece together into a clear and easy-to-read document.
Our technique of gathering our research is primary as we went to collect it
ourselves, without depending on data collected by someone else
previously and research used to compare from another source would be
secondary research.

5. What the results mean for us
By far, the most popular subgenre was psychological Horror, however, this
does not affect our original plan to have a Horror film centered around
Paranoia. It encourages us to have a short film based more about
psychological fears than any physical villain.
The majority of the people who filled in our questionnaire liked the idea of
having a true story, so if we produced a film based on events from the real
world, our final product may become more appealing to our audience
and therefore, successful.

6. What the results mean for us #2
Similarly, a vast majority of those who took our survey were found to be most of
afraid of hospitals in terms of location, however, because we are limited to only a
handful of potential filming locations, and so are unable to film in a hospital, this is
unlikely to become a part of our final product. Yet, even so, this information can still
prove to be useful as we may assume that since hospitals scare people, a medical
related theme is a part of that fear. for example, including an injection to a scene,
would at least make those same people who have Nosocomephobia
uncomfortable, helping us to achieve creating an effective horror film.
We also had a survey for the favorite movie from a set list. The most popular from the
list was the Conjuring (2013), thus we should take steps to relate our movie to the
conjuring, perhaps taking story beats from it, or influence our product
through its themes.

7. Audience Profiling (part 1)
The results showed that mostly age 16-20 watch horrors which shows us
that our target audience is in this age group, we have found that
mostly females are watching horrors which specifies our target
audience further, giving us a specific age range and gender, now we
know the audience we are profiling and focusing movie details on so
we put our efforts into finding their interests specifically. I think that the
majority being females is likely a coincidence, simply those who were
willing to be approached at the time, additionally unlike the other
groups we had a mixture of male and female members so we did not
try and compensate to create the same results as other people.
This information builds the base of how we are going to make our
movie fit into this group's preferences, as well as how we are able to
make the movie more enjoyable for this target group.

8. Audience Profiling (part 2)
Employment status & area of residence.
This graph shows us that a large amount of those we questioned
were still a part of the education system, being full and part time
students. This allows us to assume that they are not earning a
large amount of money and are limited to a small budget as a
result of this, therefore we would not be able to charge too high
a price for our product.
We also recorded the area that people lived in this meant that
we were able tell what areas are most interested in horror films
so we could focus our efforts on them advertising or setting wise.

9. Media Purchasing Habits
Our results show that the majority of people spend very
little on Horror films, preferring, mostly, to digitally
download the films they watch rather than spend money
on buying the DVD from the shop,etc. With more than
50% spending less than £5 on what they watch. We have
found that it is best we make our movie available online
as soon as possible. This is likely due to our younger and
therefore less economically active, thus will spend as little
money as possible on these things

10. Personal Preference (part 1)
preferred consumption method
We recorded the ways that people most enjoyed watching horror films, the
reason for this is so we could tell the best way to release the movie that we
could use to generate the most profit, from this we figured out that the best
way for us to release the film would be though a download service or dvd as
these would be easier to set up than making arrangements with a cinema
and have a large number of people who like them.
The reason that our market research showed this, is they were based of
younger people who prefer convenience and leisure that online
sources will give, and do not want to wait for a file to download.

11. Personal Preference (part 2)
Style of film
We looked at the different styles of films commonly used in horror. The reason
for this is that it is a big part of what draws people to a film. For example,
someone may watch a film specifically because it's in the found footage style,
a style that they enjoy. This tells us what sort of film we should create, as the film
that the highest number of people enjoy makes the most sense to make our
film like. Through our footage we found that the highest vote style was found
footage, a reason for this could be it that it makes the audience feel as if the
events could happen to them, which makes it seem more real.

12. Personal Preference (part 3:1)
Favourite sub-genres & phobia research
We researched people favorite sub genres of horror and
what scares them as this would better allow us to focus our
film on what the audience enjoys which would mean our
film would have a higher chance of success . The majority
of those who answered the questionnaire claimed that their
favorite sub-genre is psychological horror. I think this is
largely because the younger generation, (the ones who
make up the majority of our results), are more afraid of
ideas and themselves than any physical monster, partly
due to the prevalence of mental illness in the current
age.

13. Personal Preference (part 3:2)
as well as this we found out what phobia, or fear
they have so we may be able to include whatever
the majority fear is (in this case a fear of spiders) in
order to exploit the viewerships fears to make the
entire experience scarier for little effort. I think the
fear of spiders is quite a simple one, and can be
used very easily in a variety of genres and subgenres
regardless of the films contents. I think the majority of
people fear spiders due to their prevalence as
“monsters” in modern media, with many fantasy
stories using them as villains (lord of the rings, harry
potter), most children will have an ingrained fear.

14. Personal Preference (part 4)
Best setting & who do you watch movies with
Who our audience watches our movie with does slightly affect the contents of the
movie, we can change how many protagonists we want, and what their relationship
is. As the majority watch movies with friends, we may have the protagonists be a
group of friends to add a level of self insert into the movie making them relate to the
protagonists adding a high degree of relatability to the movie, making it scarier. The
fear element also explains why people watch these movies with their friends, it's a lot
easier to face movies with bravado if you're with friends, and while many watch
horror movies to be scared, sometimes it's too much on your own, this watch with
friends

15. Personal Preference (part 5)
Preferred films/ scariest
We added a section where people could tick one of 8 famous films, telling us which
one of them they considered to be the best out of the list, this is to let us know which
of them is most liked so our own film can try to emulate its style. We found the most
enjoyed film from the list was “the conjuring” however this may be influenced by the
use of older films in the list which our primarily younger group may have not seen.
The conjuring is a newer and well advertised movie, meaning many of the younger
people who filled in the questionnaire may have seen it, giving it an edge.

16. Personal Preference (part 5:2)
We adition found out what elements of the film people found most
important in scaring them, so we could know what to focus on
while creating the film and know if there's any part that people find less important
that we could save time and resources on by not putting a priority on that part.
Sound was the prevailing element that the audience found scary, i think this is largely
due to the prevalence of music in horror, how most find silence unnerving, and how
a jump in volume is enough to scare someone on its own. we found that the use of
sound at appropriate moments to build and decline climax is a factor that really
affects the audience while watching the horror it adds
to the overall feeling of terror they get.

17. Conclusion
Conclusion- who the target audience is and how this info will help our product.
We are going to focus on young adults from the ages of 16-20 as our audience
seems to be in this specific range and their are mostly females however we must
consider that there is an older audience so we should use an average of 16-30.
we can also see that the target audience mostly lives in hainault andare in full time
education so we assume they are college aged and very learned and active, most
of our audience enjoy the concept of a psychological horror better than the others
and this is great as we initially planned to produce a psychological / paranoia
based horror.

18. Conclusion #2
Most of our audience are occupied with studies, we have made the assumption that
with the time they have our audience is most likely to download the movies they
want to watch, which shows us they do not wish to pay the prices of cinema’s this
makes us know that our movie must be available online as soon as possible.
Based on this research we concluded that young females in their pre-adult stages
are most likely to watch and enjoy our horror as it meets their overall expectations for
a horror we have also learnt that the feature of the horror we have to watch out for
is the sound as it can make or break a movie if used correctly, all in all our
production ideas may work to meet our target audience’s expectations.

19. Our Proposal
Proposal- form of pitching an idea based on what you’ve found in the
research materials e.g: based on my research…
Based on our research we know that our audience is young and mostly of
school age, thus we would like our story to surround a group of young
protagonists, probably from the ages of 16-20.
A hospital was the highest rated location, but due to the exclusivity of the
location, we will be unable to film at such a location. However, this
information is still useful as we can adapt our final product based on the
results we have gathered from the public, for example, even though we
are not able to use a hospital for our filming location, we may use
concepts that can be found in a hospital such as medical
references like injections, scalpels, blood, etc.

20. Pitch
Our movie is a psychological horror, based around a group of schoolkids,
equal amounts male and female, who get trapped in a large room
together. Each one is given the information that one of them, is a
murderer. This increases the paranoia, the physiological fear and distrust of
self and others. There will be little to no dramatic irony, what these
characters know is what the viewers know.
Flashes of darkness will happen from time to time, taking advantage of
sound as the primary information giver, as we know that sounds is a large
part of what makes horror scary, as we know from our questionnaire. Not
every black flash will cause a death, but part of the excitement of the
movie, is in the audience trying to figure out which one of these characters
is the murderer.

21. Pitch #2
We did want to include a medical element, as we found that a majority of
those who filled in the questionnaire found the idea of hospitals scary, the
memory loss that each of them experienced is due to a surgery that the
murderer performed on them.