Audience Research Survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6DVD9YH

Target Audience The target audience for our horror trailer is aged between 16-30. They are fans of the horror genre and often go to the cinema to watch the latest instalment within the genre. They are also a frequent user of social media and like to voice their opinion online. They are considered to be an “explorer” (Young and Rubicam) as they have a need for something different and to discover new things. However they maybe seen as someone who is “mainstream” (Young and Rubicam) as horror movies are very popular especially now in autumn near Halloween. The target audience mainly consumes media to be entertained or for escapism (U&G). They want to experience vicarious pleasures by going through the fear and desperations with the victims in the story. To feed their escapism they are voyeuristic and want to see different locations from their everyday environment such as haunted mansion or a mental asylum. The explicit and gory nature of horror films attracts this demographic as they are looking for adenine rushes. This genre provides this through the carefully built suspense and the jump scare it uses leads to. Our target audience is also interested in the twisted characters of the “villains” in horror films such as Chucky from Child’s Play or Jigsaw from Saw and how they terrorise their victims.

Research Aim and Hypothesis The primary aim of the survey is to find out what audiences want to see from a trailer, more specifically what they are looking for in a horror trailer. This is so that we are able to incorporate these conventions into our own trailer so we can achieve a high standard and deliver to the audiences. We expect to find details such as how often the target audience watches trailers, where they watch them, what they expect from a trailer and which sub-genre is the most popular.

Methodology My survey got 12 respondents in total. This was the total number that filled out the survey after sharing it via social media. Social media was used to distribute the survey so that it’s easily accessible to our main audiences, who are an avid user of social media sites. The respondents are of similar demographics and of what our target audience is. This is so we got expectations from our main audience, people who the product is aimed at. The survey consisted of 9 open questions for people to answer. All the questions were based around what we wanted to find out from the target audience, giving us crucial information about how to appeal to them when creating the trailer. Though the survey has a 100% completion rate, there were a few difficulties with the answering of questions as they were open and some had difficulties expressing themselves. To avoid this, next time I will use a few closed questions also in order to get more specific answers tot that particular question. Also, more time should’ve been allocated to collect the results as the number of respondents do not fully represent the views of the overall target audience.

Findings

1. How often do you watch trailers? For this question we wanted to see how often our target demographic views trailers so that we know how actively our audience consumes this form of marketing for a film. Overall, the most common answer seems to be “often” or of similar meaning . This supports the assumption that our target audience often engages in watching trailers for films, including all types of different genres, hence building the hype for that particular release. This also shows that audiences watch trailers to be informed (U&G) so it’s important to include information such as the release date and potential ratings. This is positive as we now know that trailers are a way of reaching out to this particular audience as they are likely to watch it.

2. Do you like horror films? If yes, which one is your favourite? This questions aims to discover just how popular horror films are among our target demographic. In this particular survey we found that the horror genre isn’t as popular with this group as we first thought. This anomalous result is most likely due to the fact that the number of respondents is low and therefore does not represent the target audience as a whole. Although it can also be said that this demographic mainly aims to be entertained (U&G) and some might opt for cheaper thrills such as a comedy or action.

3. Do you read magazine reviews of films? Here we wanted to see how much our audiences reads reviews of films in magazines. The results overwhelmingly prove our previous hypothesis that magazine reviews aren’t popular within the target demographic as the majority of the replies say “no”. This is due to the fact that our target audience is of a younger generation where magazines are neglected and reviews of films are viewed online as they are easily accessible in larger quantities in one place. Furthermore these results support the idea that the main demographic is “mainstream” (Young and Rubicam) because they do not read magazines. This is helpful for our work because this will mean we should take into consideration writing the review online instead of print.

4. What do you look for in a trailer? This particular questions is one of the most important ones in the survey. This one provides the most useful information for us because it is specific to what we are looking for to get out of the audience. It directly asks the audience what elements, ideas and conventions they want to see in a trailer. The popular response is that they want to see a general plot of the film and the main actions within so they will have a basic understanding of what the film is about and will decide based on what they saw if they will watch the film or not. The audience is looking to be drawn into the film through the trailer. This also proves our demographic aims to be entertained (U&G). When producing ours, we must aim to engage the viewer with the characters and plot without giving to much away so they are left with wanting to see more. The answers provided such as those about the trailer needing to have lots of action, gore and suspense support our hypothesis that our target demographic is more demanding and has high expectations from a trailer.

5. What do you look for in a horror movie? Much like the previous question, this one is critical for our research. This one is very important because in order to make a successful horror trailer we must know what the audience wants to see in a horror film so we can take these ideas and use them in our trailer to appeal to them. As predicted, the audience generally looks to be scared and shocked while watching a horror film. They want to experience this through the use of jump scares and explicit scenes and hence experiencing visceral pleasure as well as escapism. This is useful as feedback because now we know we must create a tense atmosphere in the trailer, possibly leading up to a jump scare, in order to satisfy the audiences.

6. Where do you view trailers? For this particular question we aimed to determine what platforms our target audience uses to view trailers so we know where to promote our work. As we predicted, the most popular place where our audience looks at trailers is YouTube. This is no surprise as all types of films, especially big blockbusters, use this platform as well as other social media sites to promote and tease their upcoming release. Furthermore, as one of the comments points out, not many trailers are featured on the TV anymore because film distribution companies rather use the internet to reach out to their audience. In our case this is no different, as our demographic is a frequent user of social media and therefore is more likely to see the trailer on a site like YouTube. We have to ensure our trailer gets uploaded to YouTube so the target audience can easily access it.

7. How often do you watch horror movies? In this question, we surprisingly found that not many actively watch films from the horror genre. However this is probably due to the fact that we didn’t get a large enough amount of respondents to fully represent the target group, like stated before. Also this could be because this demographic mainly aims to be entertained (U&G) and some would rather watch a comedy or fantasy.

8. What is your favourite sub genre of horror? It is very important to know what sub-genre our target audiences prefers as it something we must take into consideration when making our own trailer and as to what direction and style we should go for. We go a variety of responses for this one, ranging from monsters and aliens to comedy. However generally the sub genre thriller or psychological horror seems to be popular which is what we predicted will be the most popular. This shows that our T.A is an “explorer” (Young and Rubicam) because they want to see something new, and not just the generic slasher sub genre that we often see. When shooting our trailer we will take this into consideration and aim for a sub genre of thriller with psychological elements included.

9. Where do you watch films? For this final question, we wanted to establish what the primary source is for our audience to watch films. Not surprisingly, online platforms such as Netflix and 123movies proved to be high popular. This again showing that our target demographic is very much active in consumption of media through the internet and are aiming to be entertained and to be escaping everyday life all the time. We must take this into consideration when promoting and releasing our product.