As part of my market research, I decided to produce and hand out a questionnaire aimed at teenagers from the age of 15 and onwards, to help me work out how to make my slasher horror successful. I randomly selected 30 students of which were 15+ to answer my questionnaire.
Below is the questions and results from the questionnaire.
1.) Do you enjoy watching slasher horror films?
In order to understand the interests of my potential market, I needed to know the percentage of those who enjoy watching slasher horror films to help me generalise the answers. It was good to know that 80% of the people enjoy watching slasher horrors therefore allowing me to analysis the other results in working out what their possible opinion will be on my film.
2.) Would you prefer to see a male or female killer?
To help me in deciding whether my killer should be male or female , I decided on asking this question. Although initially, I was going to use a female killer to challenge conventions and show that a female can look as daunting. After having thought about it carefully along with taking my research into consideration, I found that this may a little more complicated. Additionally, as I was required to produce a teaser trailer, it would be a short clip, therefore I wanted my audience to have a stereotypical assumption of the film.
3.) Would you find a slasher horror film scarier if the killer was masked?
From secondary research looking into conventional slasher horror killers, I found that one thing they all have in common is the either wear a mask or dehumanise their face. I wanted to ask this question to see whether this placed great importance in whether an individual would find the film scarier. By looking at the percentages, only 40% said no while 60% said yes. I didn't want my killer to be masked as I want to emphasis the fact that he is just an ordinary person and want to show that a killer can still look as daunting and scary without a mask.
4.) Do you think a film is scarier when it is set indoors rather than outdoors?
The location in which a horror film is set can often determine whether someone finds the film as scary as if it were set somewhere else. As I have chosen to set my footage indoors, I wanted to know whether this will have an effect on the reactions of my target audience and their opinions. On this question, I found that the percentages were in fact very close with 55% of people choosing indoors as a scarier setting and 45% believing the opposite. As the percentages were very close, I didn't focus too much on whether is would make a difference, for as long as it's set in the right environment.
5.) Would the release date of a horror film encourage your decision to go and watch it?
Often the release date can have a major impact on the amount of people who go out and watch a film. For example, those who may not go to the cinema very often, may in fact choose to go and see a scary film around the Halloween period. However, when I looked at the results from this question, I found that only 25% of people feel the release date has an effect on whether they would go and watch the film. I have decided to not place great importance on the release date as such, as I believe that it won't make much of a difference. On the other hand, I do feel that people are more likely to go and watch a film in the cinema around winter time rather than summer due to the weather.
