The document summarizes Charlie Watson's research into horror films Birdbox, Hush, and existing horror posters and DVD covers to inspire their own horror film project. They conducted a survey to understand what attracts audiences to horror films and found suspense, mystery, and thrill are most appealing. While found footage was the initial idea, slasher and comedy horror are most popular. The research aims to understand how to effectively utilize sensory deprivation and create tension without visuals like the inspirational films.

1. FMP RESEARCH
Charlie Watson

2. Birdbox
• In brief Bird Box is a film about invisible entity's
that kill you if you look at them, and a woman
and her children run away, blindfolded, to a
sanctuary where they are safe from the entity's.
• My film is inspired by Birdbox in the way they
created a lot of tension and dramatic moments
with something you couldn’t see. I want to
utilise this in my film, but not to the extent it
was done in Birdbox. The way the film
essentially deprives you of a sense to create
tension throughout the whole film whilst it may
not be a tense scene.

3. Birdbox (cont)
• I want to take a similar approach to the style of
sensory depreivation sued in this film, but not
take it as far, possibly just making the setting
dark so the characters cannot see what is
chasing them, instead of being completley
blind. There is a scene where the main
character mistakenly attacks a human, instead
of figthing of an entity, due to not being able to
see, and I think this could be something very
interesting to draw insparation from, especially
since the shot cuts from what the character can
see to a 3rd person perspective frequently.

4. Birdbox

5. Hush
• In breif Hush is a film about a deaf woman who
tries to survive being stalkesd by a masked killer
• Hush interested me in the same way Birdbox
did, with it being able to create a lot of tension
and dramatic feel by using sensory deprivation,
although this time its being unable to hear
instaed of see.

6. Hush (cont)
• A scene I want to take inspiration from is the
scene where the main characters friend is
getting killed outside of her hosue and the mian
character cant hear whats going on. I really like
the sense for fear this scene creates, you as the
veiwer know whats going on but the main
character is completley unaware, and this
makes you feel like the main character is
incredibly vunerable too, which adds to the
incredible sense of tension that is present
rhroughout the film.

7. Hush

8. Existing Posters
• I like this poster because it very subtly uses
the trees in the background to create a
skull face in the background of the picture.
I also like the color scheme of the poster,
with the yellow writing being a good
contrast with the black and red. I want to
use a similar color scheme idea on my
poster, with 2 main colors and a
contrasting color to make the important
text really stand out.

9. Existing Posters
• I have chosen this poster to look at as its
very minimal with only a few colors and a
fairly minimal main design in the center on
a black background. I also like the
placement of text on the poster, as it takes
up space that would normally be left
empty. This is something I want to look into
doing on my poster, as keeping a minimal
design without leaving empty space is
quite hard.

10. Existing Posters
• Ive chosen this poster to look into because
like the others it is a fairly minimalist
design, but there is a lot going on in the
middle of the poster. I really like the faces
in the womans face, although I do think
there is possibly a lot going on, but I'm
going to take inspiration from it and try
and incorporate something like the faces
into my own poster

11. Existing DVD Covers
• I have chosen to look at
this DVD cover as the front
cover really pulls off a
minimalistic look, only
using the face in the center
and the text at the bottom
and top. This is something I
would consider doing in
mine as I really like a
minimalistic style, with not
much going on, but
keeping the important
details in there.

12. Existing DVD Covers
• I was really drawn to the
back of this cover,
especially with how they
arranged the pictures on
the back. I think it adds an
interesting layer to the
cover with them not being
just arranged in a straight
line. I really like the use of
color on the back too,
which is a nice contrast to
the black and white front
side of the cover.

13. Existing DVD Covers
• Much like the Halloween cover, I
was drawn to this one due to its
minimalistic design of only a face
on the front. I like how the text
is carved into the pumpkin and
it's something I would want to
incorporate into my DVD cover
or possibly even a poster where
appropriate. The color scheme
matching the back is something I
want to use in my cover, as I
think it makes it gel together
more and look more cohesive,
rather than having such a
contrast like the Halloween
cover.

14. Existing DVD Covers
• I like the choice of font
used on this cover, as it fits
into the whole horror
theme and gives you an
insight to the film you
would be watching before
you’ve even started
watching it. I definitely
want my DVD cover to have
the same effect on the
person looking at it, so
looking into the fonts will
be helpful.

15. Audience Research

16. Survey
Questions
• What attracts you to a horror film
• Whats more important in films in general
• Whats your favorite subgenre of horror
• What do you like in a horror film
• What do you dislike in a horror film
• Whats the best horror you’ve seen and why?
I have decidede to ask these questions as I think it will
help me get a much more accurate idea of what
people in my target audience really want to see in a
horror film, and it will really help me when it comes to
planning my final product.

17. Survey Results
I only got 8 responses to my survey,
which is not as many as I wanted to
get, but it was enough to get an idea of
what people expected to see in my
film. In my first question, I asked what
attracts you to a horror film in the first
place, which will help me narrow down
what I need to do to make my film
appeal to the target audience, the
most common answers were a good
trailer and how scary the film is.

18. Survey Results
• My second question was what is more
important in a film no matter the genre,
rather than just the horror genre, whislt I
could have been more specific to the genre
of horror, I wanted to be broad incased I had
to change anything to do with the genre of
the film later on, I would still be able to
reference this and have a good idea as to
what people thought was good.

19. Survey Results
• The third question was asking what their
favourite sub-genre of horror was, and it was
between slasher and comedy horror, this
helps me narrow down the ideas, but it
clashes with my initial idea as it was going to
be a found footage film

20. Survey Results
• I left this question more open instead of
using multi choice, as I wanted to find out
some more in-depth info into what people
actually liked to see in a horror film. The
replies were quite broad but most of them
could be linked back to the general area
of suspense/thrill/mystery. This does make it
easier for me in production as I now know if I
stick to this area, I will please the majority of
my target audience.

21. Survey Results
• I wanted to leave this question open to
whatever they wanted to write, so I could
get in depth answers rather than set data
like the first half of the questions. Although
this is harder to generalize it is helpful to
know what not to add into my final
production.

22. Survey Results
• I left this question more open aswell, as it
needed to be. Although I only got a few
serious responses it was enoguh to give me
an idea of the genres and styles of my
target audiences favorite horror films.