Audience Research: Initial Class Poster and Class Poll

Plot Details for Your Idea:

A young girl’s sister has been murdered yet the identity of the murderer is unknown. As the plot progresses, the audience discover that the young girl is possesed by her sister who seeks revenge and communicates through mirrors and photos. As the sisters learn a group of people had commited the murder together, the young girl hunts each individual down. The audience realise that the group were formed by a serial killer and the individual are in fact ordinary people that have made bad life choices. Therefore, the girl gives them a choice by allowing them to fight for their lives. However, if they don’t fight hard enough and gain a new appreciation for the life they have, they are faced with the prospect of a gruesome, horrific death.

Positive Responses From Other Class Members:

The main positive aspect of positive responses related to the amount of contextual background we planned to convey to the audience. For example, the storyline behind the narrative would be made very obvious so that the audience would be able to follow and understand what’s happening; this would be instead of leaving everything very mysterious. Other responses also suggested that certain aspects of our plot would be interesting; for example, one class member said they liked the idea of a serial killer having other recruits to do his dirty work. Similarly, other class members liked the idea that the motive behind the killings is simplistic which makes the idea have a better sense of realism. Overall, the incorporation of paranormal occurrences seemed to be the strongest feature of our idea as most responses from the class said this is an aspect of the film they would find appealing due to its creepy and eerie nature.

Negative Responses From Other Class Members:

The main criticism regarding our idea was the complexity of the plot. For example, some class members suggested that if the plot was very involved then the audience may lose interest or not be able to follow along. In addition to this, people also suggested that the recruits would need to be less unruly in order to feel sympathetic for these characters when put into gory and unsettling situations. Therefore, it was suggested that homeless people could be used.

How Many Voted That They Would Watch The Film?

After a class vote, 7½ people said that they would watch our film based on the description of our idea and plot outline; this resulted in our idea coming 5^th out of the five groups in class. This suggested that the negative responses needed to be taken into consideration in order to improve the appeal of our idea.

Are You Happy With The Score Overall? Do You Think This Idea Is Worth Making For Your Real Trailer?

Overall, the score our film idea received was reasonably low which was disappointing because the figures demonstrated that the majority of people would not be interested in seeing our film. Therefore it became evident that aspects of the plot would need to be developed in order for our idea to attract a wider audience. For example, using the negative responses and adapting our ideas would give us a better chance of creating a more appealing trailer. Overall, our plot needed to become much more simplistic and well structured so that it would follow the typical Hollywood Narrative allowing it to be realistic and plausible. As a result, our actual trailer will hopefully entice more people and appear more professional and conventional of the Psychological horror genre.

Class Poll
Below is the class horror poll that we conducted in October, 2012. It was carried out with 8 males and 9 females, and confirmed that females generally prefer psychological and action horrors, while males prefer gory horrors. The results were close, however, which suggests horror can appeal to both genders.