Audience Research

In preparation of making my horror trailer my methodology included researching and experimenting with different ideas,and basing my trailer around the way the audience would respond to that particular idea. I made a class poster that was called 'Behind The Shadows' the main image included a shadow over a girl's face to make it look secretive and mysterious, the class audience liked this idea and the title which they thought suited the plot of the film. The overall outcome resulted in my group receiving the highest mark of 11/15.

I then used the 10 class trailers we watched and analysed to narrow down what features to include, if the class prefered gore in the trailer rather than violence I chose to sway more towards that idea. The class also preferred a horror with a twist or a dramatic revelation at the end, which I also found interesting and exciting as it made the trailer more appealing. These usually included montages of quick shots to create excitement, which is probably why the '30 Days of Night' trailer scored so well.



After we had made a rough cut of 'Behind The Shadows' we had a focus group for it. This was filmed and had lots of comments from our target audience. From the focus group I found that parts of my trailer were either too basic and slow and needed some more speed and quick montage to make the trailer more packed and exciting. I changed some of the music to suit what was happening in various scenes and added some more gore to keep the audience interested.



As my trailer is a psychological thriller my audience would expect to see moments of tension and suspense and regular scenes of montage. And the expectation of gore and sinister moments fits in with the psychological side of the film. My trailer was given a certificate of 15 as i felt it would show a clear target audience of 15-35 year olds, the features our trailer were at the standard that at least 15 year olds would be able to watch and its something they could handle as it isnt completely a full on horror. My trailer would be mainly targeted at girls aged 15-35 as they would most likely find it easier to watch as the main characters are two female best friends which would be more appealing to them.

Although I did a lot of different types of research to fully meet my audiences interests and needs, no amount of research would mean that I would fully understand my audience because of polysemy. Different people like different things and will pick out different things and messages from a film. When discussing my own trailer 'Behind the Shadows' I agreed with many comments from our audience however there were a few comments that I felt didnt need to be changed and disagereed with. An example of this would be the end scene when Nicole (Nicola) is clicking the pen in silence with a close up shot of a sly grin on her face. Some members of the group didnt get the idea of this whereas others liked the tension it brought to the trailer and ended as a 'cliffhanger'. I finally decided to keep this scene the same as I trusted myself with the decision that a lot more people will find the end scene interesting and the ratio would override those who it doesn't interest.