FS JB: Task 17 Group 3: Audience Research

This represents how more males are likely to watch horror films, therefore, due to the binary opposition of males and heterosexuality, we can infer females must play an important role in our production.

The majority of respondents said they only particularly watch films once ‘every so often’, this is interesting as it represents how horror movies are a relatively niche market. This means people will only really watch horror movies which particularly catch their attention. Therefore, inferring the opening scene of our horror movie must be effective and appealing in immediately catching the audiences attention.

Out of all the horror films,80% had seen Saw, a massacre / slasher with supernatural attributes. Which is so popular because it is such a significant and established franchise. As a group we have taken most inspiration from ‘SE7EN’, which 40% of the viewers had seen showing the psychological genre is fairly influential and popular. This is interesting as it shows the genre we choose to use is generally liked and people find it interesting.

Shutter island was the most popular horror, due to its A-listers and its storyline. This is important as it shows the opening of Shutter Island must have been engaging, this is a good sign as we are going to try and perform close ups in our opening, as Shutter Island did so in its opening sequence, this was done to prevent the audience from establishing a known location creating a mysterious tone. Cabin in the Woods was also popular, this is interesting as we intend to use aspects from the opening of this also, such as the use of hieroglyphics to create a historical and engraved  attitude.

The respondents favourite horror genre was Gothic, this was quite surprising as it is usually a less significant genre. However, this is useful as there are links between the Gothic, and the Psychological genre, especially in our production as we have used symbolism such as religious crosses and the antagonist wears quite a gothic costume.

The majority of people rated the opening of SE7EN as ‘Very sinister’, this is influential to our production as we have based our filming largely on the style, precision and angles used in SE7EN with similar props. It is also useful as nobody, despite everyone’s differentiating taste, rates the opening as anything less than sinister, meaning everyone liked the style of SE7EN and will hopefully like the similar style we have filmed ours in.

 

40% of the respondents said it was important to feature a female protagonist which is a relief as we went to some lengths to recruit a female protagonist as we thought it was essential to have a female protagonist in our film, due to stereotypes that girls are meant to be more  fearful than men which may lead to the audience giving the protagonist more sympathy than if it was a male protagonist.