Audience Analysis

As part of our audience research, we took five volunteers from years ten and eleven and asked them a number of questions as shown below. This gave us some interesting results which will help us in the planning and creation of our film trailer.

          1. How old are you?

We chose people who fit in the age range of our target audience which is around 14-16. Everyone we asked was of school age in either year 10 or 11. This gave us a good idea of the opinions of people from our appropriate target audience.

          2. What interests or hobbies do you have?

Despite all interviewees being picked entirely at random, all of them said their main interest was either music or sport. This has led us to believe these are probably the two main hobbies throughout our target age; therefore we should try and keep this in mind when filming our trailer. It may mean making references to sport in the form of dialogue, or having one of the characters heavily into sport, same with music, or we could focus a bit more on having some enticing music on the trailer which would attract those with a musical ear.

          3. Do you have any fears or phobias?

We found that the most common fear was spiders, which are probably something a lot of people are scared of. This could be useful, as we could incorporate parts of this into the trailer. If we use something that will really hit home with the viewers, it may have more of an effect on them, but this may be something to use in the actual film rather than the trailer so that it doesn't put them off going to see it. Another collective fear was heights which I think would be easy to include in the trailer through the camera shots by using high angle shots or even low angle shots, this will help to strike fear into the viewers without being too hard-hitting so that they will avoid watching. Other things we found were small spaces, children used in horror films and doing things badly. These are all things which could be cleverly placed into the trailer, although most of our shots will be filmed outdoors which means there won’t be many small spaces, also we do not have the opportunity to use children in our trailer.

          4. What do you look for in a film?

From what we gathered, the majority of our interviewees are most enticed by action and scary scenes when looking at films. This is good considering our genre is horror, and so it will be relevant to include such films, especially in the trailer as this will need to be very gripping so that it will encourage viewers to go and watch the film. Another thing that people said they look for in a film is a comedy aspect which we will try and include a slight aspect of within the trailer. The other aspect that was mentioned was a good looking male, which is probably something we’ll consider when creating the promotional poster.

          5. What makes you want to go and see a film?

We found that it’s mostly the trailer that makes people want to go and see a film therefore we need to have more focus on the trailer than the other parts of the promotional package (poster and magazine cover. It will need to be gripping and exciting so that people are left wanting to see more, making them go and see the film in the cinema. Another thing that was mentioned was the word of mouth method, meaning the reason for going to see a film would be because loads of people said it was really good. This means that our marketing, specifically viral, would need to be especially good so that the word is spread easily. This would be an important thing to focus on as social networking is most popular within the same age range as our target audience, so it would be an effective method of promotions. One interviewee also said that it depends on the actor or director to whether he will watch the film, if it is a favourite or one that is commended; he would be more likely to watch the film. This is not something we are capable of endearing to, but we will keep it in mind.

          6. What do you think of the horror genre?

We got quite mixed feedback on this question; some answers were quite vague so we never really came to an overall conclusion. I think the general consensus was that it has to be the right kind of scary, meaning it depends on the sub-genre e.g. some only like comedy horror, whereas some prefer psychological so that it plays with their mind. But we also found that when it’s the type of horror they enjoy, they do enjoy it a lot because of the excitement and the adrenalin it gives you, also the fact that you don’t really know what’s going to happen and the element of surprise. We will look closer at this question when we create a survey.

          7. What elements of horror do you enjoy?

Every answer we received was different, but overall we concluded that the most important elements are the build-up of tension and the sense of realism. These are two things that we are planning on heavily focusing on when creating our trailer, which will hopefully improve the effectiveness of the end product and help to entice more viewers.s.