Audience surveys evaluation

1. AUDIENCE EVALUATION

2. HOW DID WE ATTRACT OR ADRESS OUR
AUDIENCE?

3. Before making the project, we first needed to know the preferences
and taste of the audience, and what would scare them, a key
component in making a horror sequence, to achieve this my group
conducted research into the target audience of 16-35 year olds, with
the feedback from the audience preference data, we could then
incorporate this into our horror sequence to appease the audience
most effectively.

4. This data is from an anonymous survey on
survey monkey, we used this as a medium to
conduct our research into the mind-set of our
audience. My group member Grace
https://gwainner.wordpress.com/ converted the
data from the survey monkey into pie charts.
This chart shows that our sample sympathise
with female characters more, this could be
largely due to many films portraying females
as the “damsel in destress” conforming to
Propp’s narrative theory. Because of this we
made a lead character/victim a female, but
because many felt sympathetic to males we
also incorporated a meal lead as well, the use
of two main characters increases
representation and allows our piece to be as
progressive and appealing as possible. We
used our data to influence our decisions
surrounding our film to hopefully achieve the
largest audience, and one that would enjoy
the film as much as possible.

5. We asked this question to see if sexuality mattered to our sample
size, whether the sexuality of the lead(s) mattered to whether
they would watch the piece or not, the majority stated ‘no’
however a minority did state that the sexuality of characters
mattered, so to appease them we used two leads of different
genders to appeal to the largest possible audience

6. We asked this question to see if people cared about the
ethnicity of a characters, our sample unanimously declared
that ethnicity did not matter to them, we took this result and
decided that we would not chose a character based on their
ethnicity, this allowed us to be free in our choosing and not be
constrained by ethnicity, which undoubtedly should not
matter regardless.

7. This survey result allowed us to pursue a clear direction when formulating the plot for our piece, the results
showed us that we needed to make a detailed, multi-tiered plot, not a simple cliché plot of a doll murdering
victims, but one with emotion and doubt, that made the characters but also the audience question decisions
and motives, not just unanimously picture the doll as the main and only antagonist.

8. Who would be the main target
audience for your media piece?

9. For our target audience we chose a 15-35 age range, this is because it incorporates the largest horror
viewer age group of 15-25 year olds, but the fact that the doll is old and outdated this could appeal to
slightly older viewers of whom might’ve had similar toys when they were growing up, and also they
might prefer the psychological horror theme to more violent and harsh horror sub-genres such as slasher
and zombies. We felt the 15-35 age range was appropriate, and as most horrors are 15 or 18 rated we felt
that our target audience would be more mature and would be able to understand the narrative. After
research into the horror genre and the British Board of Film Classification we came to the decision that
our film would be rated a 15, this was due to us making it legal for our lowest quartile of our target
audience to watch the film, but also to appeal to the more horror-weary audiences, of whom might think
an 18 rated film would be too graphic.
We chose to use the gothic sub-genre of horror as a basis to the creation of our piece, as we used a doll,
this was due to the great scenery, atmosphere and cinematography that gothic horrors usually depict,
which we wanted to replicate in our own piece. We also chose to make our horror a psychological horror,
as films of this nature have a large target audience such as paranormal activity, and demand would be
high, but also the group preference was shifted away from slasher and zombie horrors of which we
thought the current market is over-saturated.

10. We continued to ask questions to individuals
about their perceptions on horror, to try and
obtain an appropriate target audience age
range.

11. This question allowed us to determine that the majority of our sample
size were easy to scare, which meant that we could be more direct in our
techniques to connote horror, making it easier to scare a larger
audience, however the question is inefficient as it does not determine
who doesn’t get scared, the wording ensures that ensures that everyone
gets scared, but some more than others, without the clear definition it
made the data difficult to truly incorporate into our media text, and to
allow us to determine our target audience sufficiently.

12. The data from the question shows the genre preference of our sample, paranormal and
gothic horror sub-genres are the most popular, we used this as evidence to dictate our choice
in genre, as a result “Porcelain” incorporates both the paranormal and gothic sub genres to
try and achieve the largest audience possible. And although many people might not like
these sub-genres, our strict conformation with the conventions of horror, would mean that
many will still enjoy our film as they will see certain aspects of other sub-genres in our text
aswell.