Research Report

Research is extremely important when creating any form of media or product in general. For my film trailer’s research this encapsulates elements such as what audiences want from the product, background research into the genre and the product types in general (such as the websites, posters and trailers. This will all help to contribute to the planning process for my own website, poster and trailer. I will look into how my research will help with my ideas about my website poster and trailer as well as evaluating the effectiveness of each piece of research.

When asking my questionnaire, I tried to ask an equal amount of males and females so I could get an even distribution of answers between the two sexes. However I had more females than makes that had participated in the questionnaire (with 15 females and 8 males). As this is only quantitative data, I cannot gather much more information from it. My results may be biased towards the female gender as they represent the majority of the participants. The questionnaire once again gathered quantitative data as it was asking about their age alongside their gender. I had found that the majority if people were aged between sixteen and seventeen years old (with 87% of the people asked, falling within that age group). There were a few other people who were aged under sixteen (4%) and the rest were eighteen and over (9%). The bulk of these ages all fit with my target audience. I now know that their answers will greatly influence my work, as I need the opinions of people in my target audience.

The first three questions of my questionnaire established the participant’s interest in horror films on a broad scale. The first question asked whether they enjoyed watching horror films or not. Nearly all of the participants stated that they enjoy watching horror films (with 83% saying yes and the other 17% saying they did not enjoy watching horror films). This is useful as ii will find the input of those who are familiar with horror films more valuable as their answers will be a reflection of the films that they have seen. To contrast, it is also useful to have the opinions of those who do not like watching horror as they can say what is missing from horrors, which could appeal to them. Modern horror films were seen as the most popular when the participants were asked what their favourite horror films were. In order to suit the needs of my target audience, I will be using the influences of modern horror films, especially the more favoured films such as The Conjuring (24%). I will have a similar approach with the response to the audience’s preferred sub genres of horror. The most popular sub-genres of horror were paranormal and found footage films. I will most likely be using paranormal influences within the plot of my film trailer.

The following two questions focused on what aspects my participants dislike and like about horror films. The majority of the participants implied that the plot was the most important factor and that a boring or predictive plot is unenjoyable. Alternatively, the most favoured features of a horror, to them is a high level of gore. I feel that will be able to easily embed gore into my trailer as special effects makeup is something I could recreate for my film. Adding on to the gore, jump scares and suspense were also things that audiences liked and wanted from horror films. This may be deemed more difficult, but necessary as it is what helps to make a horror scary for viewers. This will be done through the editing mostly, but also the content of the shots.

The final two questions were multiple choice and asked the participants what settings and character types they thought were most appropriate for horror films. In regards to the setting of a horror, the most apt locations were haunted and abandoned houses. This is most likely chosen as people had stated that paranormal horrors were their favourite. Although this setting is a cliché for horror, I will try and use it as an influence as it would help to correspond with the supernatural element. Similarly, the most popular responses for ideal character types were somewhat cliché character types. Children, dolls and demons were highly chosen by my participants. This is most likely due to the recent popularisation of films with links to childhood, such as ‘Annabelle’, ‘The Conjuring’, and ‘The Woman in Black’ which use props such as children’s toys and music boxes to induce horror. I will take these into consideration when creating the treatment for my trailer.

After looking into and analysing three different websites for a variety of genres; horror, romance and drama, I had found many ways that I could layout my own website and how it affects audiences and traffic to the site itself. La La Land’s website features more audio/visual aspects to the site, with a video looping in the background, showing clips from the film. In addition to this, one of the songs from the soundtrack is being played on a loop alongside the clip. This feature is good for the promotion of both the film and the soundtrack. I will take that on board with my own website, but I am unsure how applicable that would be for a horror film’s website. The layout for the site was clear and concise, which made it easy to navigate and use. American Honey’s website was much more plain and simple, which made it easy to use. But overall, it was rather lacklustre due to the limited function and features to it. However, during my analysis, the website was updated and more visual and interactive features were included which made it increasingly interesting and appealing for viewers. Finally, the Lights Out website is the most applicable as I want to make a horror film trailer, website and poster. The colour scheme was extremely dark and the sound that was used helped to create an eerie setting for users. There was an easy layout for the website and there was also interactive features and links to social media accounts and hashtags they could use. Analysing all of the sites were useful for making my own website in regards to the different layouts I could use and what features I could include.

I had analysed the posters for Beauty and the Beast, Captain America: Civil War and Django Unchained. The layouts for the posters remained relatively similar, with the exception of the layout for the Django poster with the placement of the cast names. Despite that, the main image and production credits were the same over all three posters. After looking at these posters, I have a clear idea of the layout for my own poster, which will be shown in my poster considerations and content draft. I did not feel that this set of research was too beneficial as I already had an idea of the qualities of posters already.

For the trailer analysis’, I analysed the trailers for The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Deadpool and Get Out and I had found that analysing these were the most beneficial as it gave me an insight into what editing and shots I could be using within my own trailer. For horror films, it is not the cast, director or production companies that grasp the audience’s attention, for the trailer, it is simply the visuals, sound and editing which help to grip the audience and this was evident in the Jane Doe trailer as the sound worked well with the shots and editing with the use of things such as voiceovers. For the Deadpool trailer, music and dialogue worked best alongside the vivid visuals of the action in the film but it also helped to create the comedic timing that was essential for this witty superhero film. Finally the Get Out trailer, which is the most recent of the three, was once again a horror that needed good editing to be able to entice audiences to be interested in the film. When editing my own trailer, I will need to focus on sound as a great importance to how well the shots connect and the quality of everything that is filmed.