Survey Results

After gathering the results from my survey I found out a few key things that helped influence the direction of my movie trailer, one main factor being the audience of my questionnaire. All of the respondents were at a secondary school age so that is why I have chosen to base it upon that target group. Conventionally, horror films based on this age group feature a main protagonist that is relatively young as it is usually somebody they can relate to, so I have chosen to use a young female actress for my main role to suit this. Younger groups also seem to be drawn to blood and gore, so for my trailer there will be two scenes of death, a typical horror movie trailer will not reveal all the deaths that will happen in the movie as they need to leave enough for the viewer to be satisfied by, but to still be curious as to what happens in the film. 80% of the people who answered the survey said that they preferred when not a lot of the plot was revealed to them, this type of trailer proving to make the movie seem underwhelming. Horror films also tend to use lighting to create emotion which is something that the respondents of my survey valued as an important aspect of a trailer, this heavily influenced my decision making as it is something that viewers find important in order to create a successful horror movie trailer. Low key lighting completely changes the atmosphere of a trailer, it alerts the viewer of the genre and gives the impression that it is not going to be light hearted. The movie "Se7en" used a lot of low key lighting in the trailer which gave a very effective result, instantly setting the dismal mood of the thriller and helping the audience to identify the genre of the movie.

As for the setting of the trailer, 50% of respondents said that they would like it to be set in a domestic setting, with 25% saying that they would like it to be set in an isolated area. Luckily, living in the countryside allows me to infuse both of these ideas as I have access to woodland area but also residential areas that would bring in the domestic side of the results. A domestic setting is perfect for my trailer as it gives a touch of realism and makes it easy for me to display an equilibrium, a functioning society where everything is running smoothly and nothing is disrupting the peace of the setting. Domestic settings also work in the way that we can relate to them more, which is why a lot of modern horror films are set in a modern society as this is often the most unsettling for the viewer.
Due to this I have decided I will be filming my trailer around my housing area and parts of our local forest, they are easy for me to access and I can do part of the filming in the school as the storyline follows a teenage girl in secondary school.