Audience Research

Before creating our film we needed to discover what the audience wanted and expected from a horror film, to help find out me and my partner created a short questionaire that covers the questions we wanted to find out. We asked ten people who enjoy horror films and questions that would help us create the best film possible that keeps the audience engaged.

One of the questions we asked was "Does a horror film need violence?"

4 people answered yes and 6 answered no so it was a pretty even response. We decided to not have violence in the opening but have evidence of violence and gore, creating the idea of the dead people in different places.

Another question we asked was 'in a horror film do you think music is appropriate?'

Like we had expected the majority thought that it was appropriate to have music, this was good because we have used music to build suspense and create the mood and atmosphere.

The questionnaire proved to be very helpful with the planning and making of our film, most of the answers were what we had expected, like whether darkness was a good effect within horror films (which adds to the spooky factor). There were a few questions we were surprised on like whether a group of friends was a good idea or not, we had first planned to use a group of our friends to reflect other horror movies (like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of Wax) but the audience disagreed and didn't want a group of friends so we decided on using a couple instead.