Questionnaire One Analysis

For our a2 media studies coursework, one of the tasks we were asked to complete is to carry out target audience research for my promotional package in order to find out more about our audience, and what they’d like to see in our work. This is my analysis of the first questionnaire we completed. This questionnaire was handed out to 20 people within our target audience, and varied a range of open and closed questions.

Firstly, we asked the participants to tick a box confirming which gender they were; this question allowed us to find out more about our audience. The results for this question showed that there were 13 females and 7 males who took part. I have learnt from this that the majority of people interested in watching a psychological horror film are females; this helped with the planning of our trailer, as we know that a female lead character would help the audience to relate more.

Next, we asked the participants another closed question, getting them to tick a box telling us which age category they fall under. We gave participants the options of ’15-17’, ’18-20’, ’21-23’, ’24-26’, and ‘27+’. However, we gave our questions out to mostly younger people as they fit in with our target audience more. For this question, I found out that eight of the twenty taking part in the questionnaire was aged 15-17, seven were aged 18-20, four were aged 21-23 and only one was aged 24-26. This question revealed that our work should be aimed at older teenagers, as they’re the ones who’re going to be more interested in our film.

For question three, we explained to the participants what a psychological horror is, as they may be unsure of the specific definition. After the explanation, we asked them ‘how often do you watch psychological horrors?’ This was another closed question, with the options of ‘never’, ‘weekly’, ‘monthly’ and ‘yearly’. For this question, we found that 5 people watch them weekly, 8 people watch them monthly, and 7 people watch them yearly. From this question, I found out how popular psychological horrors are with the target audience. I found that most people watch them weekly or monthly; this would mean they’d be genre-savvy, so sticking to conventions would be successful for our film.

Question four was an open ended question, allowing the audience to write any answer they wanted. We asked participants ‘What is it you like about these horrors?’ This question was asked to get their opinions on psychological horrors; there were a variety of answers, but the most common said that they’re intellectually stimulating and make you think, the tension and suspense, the jump scares, and the fact that they’re true to real life so they become more scared. I have learnt from this question what should be included in our trailer in order for our audience to want to watch the film.

Next, we asked how much money the audience would spend on a movie magazine. We gave the participants choices, as seen below.

This question would help with our planning for our magazine, as we’d know what price range we’re working with. Results for this questionnaire revealed that 5 participants had picked ‘£0-99p’, 4 had put ‘£1-1.99’, 9 would pay “£2-2.99’ and 2 would pay ‘£3-3.99’. By asking this question and analysing the results, I found that our magazine should be prices between £2 – 2.99 as this is the result that most of our target audience picked; if we priced it £3 or over, our target audience would be less likely to purchase our magazine. These results have met my expectations and ideas as I believe that my audience would not want to spend this amount of money on a magazine.

Question six asked our target audience ‘What features in a film trailer persuade you to watch the movie?’ This was an open ended question, allowing audiences to give any answer; we decided to do this to ensure that we get the best results, without limiting participants to certain choices. The most popular answers to this question were ‘the storyline’, ‘jump scares’, ‘antagonist tease’ and ‘the music’. From this question, I have learnt the most important features that should be included in our horror film trailer in order to attract our target audience. This will influence my research and planning and our practical work as we now have clear ideas as to what to look for in existing texts, along with what to include in our trailer.

The next question asked ‘Do you prefer the main character to be male or female? Why?’ Again, we left this as an open ended

question in order to get the most reliable and accurate results from our target audience. Out of the 20 participants, 9 said they’d prefer to see a female antagonist/protagonist as they can relate to the character more and find it interesting to see things from a female perspective. 4 participants said they’d prefer a male main character due to stereotypical ideas of males being stronger and dominant. Lastly, 7 participants said they didn’t mind because it doesn’t matter to them which gender the main character is. From these results, my partner and I decided that our main character should be female, in order to follow conventions from the psychological horror sub-genre, and because most of our target audience said female.

A large part of horror films is ensuring that you address the audience’s fears in order to get a reaction from them. With this in mind, we next asked the audience ‘What is your worst fear?’ By asking this question, we hoped to find out more about our target audience’s fears in order for us to address them in our trailer. For this question, we gathered a large variety of answers, with the most common being, ‘family death’, ‘loneliness’, ‘the paranormal’, and ‘blood/gore’. From this, we have learnt that we need to address these aspects throughout the promotional package. Although psychological horrors do not largely feature blood and gore, we will address this fear slightly, but not base our whole film on it. However, death of a family member and loneliness will link into our narrative, meaning we can address the audience’s fears, and increase their fear whilst watching the trailer/movie.

Question nine asked our target audience ‘what are your top 3 favourite horror movies?’ We asked this question to find out what films our target audience like in order to find out what film’s we should use as inspiration. When looking at the results, we were rewarded with a large variety, so we picked out the answers that appeared the most; ‘Insidious’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Annabelle’, ‘Orphan’ and ‘SAW’. I think that the target audience enjoy these films because many of them include children being the antagonists; this creates fear for the audience as children are typically seen as sweet and innocent. Also, Saw is unique to different films, and includes a lot of gore, showing why it is such a popular franchise. However, although ‘The Shining’ and ‘Orphan’ are both psychological horrors and will be used as inspirations for our work, they don’t fit into our narrative as well as other films, such as ‘Black Swan’.

For the final question, question ten, we asked ‘which of the following influences you most in deciding to watch a film?’ We gave participants three boxes, and asked them to tick one of them; ‘film poster’, ‘trailer’, or ‘magazine’. This question allowed us to find out which of our pieces will have the most influence on our audience, to ensure we make this piece a priority. When analysing the results from this, we found that only 5 people thought posters influenced them most and 15 people said the trailer. Surprisingly, none of our target audience chose the magazine as being the most influential. From these results, my partner and I concluded that the trailer will need to include the most information on our film, e.g. release date, as this is the piece that our audience will be most influenced by.

Overall, from this questionnaire we have learnt more about how to appeal to our target audience, for example, what aspects of horror should be included in our trailer, and how to appeal to our audience’s fears. We also found out that our trailer will be the most influential piece, as well as learning more about our target audience.