Primary Research- Trailers (Questionnaire)

I created a questionnaire as primary research into horror trailers to find out how people consume media. This is quantitative research as it about the number of feedback over the quality of the feedback. I sent out a total of 20 questionnaires however only received 17 back. Creating this questionnaire will give me credible results from my target audience.

I ask my target audience what there age is,  8 people are aged between 15 and 20, 3 between 21-25, 1 between 26 and 30 and 5 were 31 years or older. This shows that the majority of my target audience fall into the 15-20 year old category.

I also ask for their gender, more are female with 10 females and 7 males, from the feedback received it shows that the majority of my target audience are females however a small amount of questionnaires were given out so this data may not be reliable.

Question 1 asks how often they watch horror films, 8 people ticked occasionally, 5 people ticked regularly, 3 people put rarely and only one person said they never watched horror films.

Question 2 says "how often do you visit the cinema to watch horror films?",  7 people ticked rarely which was the most popular box, this could be because going to the cinema is quite expensive. 5 people ticked occasionally, 2 said they visited regularly and 3 said never. The 3 people that said never may either not enjoy the Cinema or could possibly be too young to watch the horror films at the cinema.

Question 3 I asked where they see the majority of film trailers promoted, the most popular was TV advertisements with a total of 7 ticks followed by the internet with 4 ticks for YouTube and 1 tick for Demand TV. 3 people ticked the Cinema and 2 people ticked DVD/ Blu-ray. No one ticked other.

For Question 4 the most popular horror sub-genre was Psychological with 9 people out of 17 ticking it. 6 people chose Monster, 4 people chose Comedy horror and Natural and Zombie both had 3 ticks. Slasher had 2 ticks and the least popular sub-genre was splatter. I could image not many people would know the difference between Slasher and Splatter so if I were to improve this questionnaire i could add a definition to each sub-genre. 0 people ticked Other.

Question 5 asks people whether they think death needs to be included in a horror film, 11 people said yes wit their answers being:

It's expected to be in a horror fil as nearly every horror film has death.

Having death in a horror film makes the film more realistic.

I think death would make a horror film more scary because death overall is a scary thing.

5 people answered no to having death in a horror triailer, some of the answers were:

A film can still be scary if death isn't included.

I'd prefer it if death wasn't included in a horror film as I believe it is to common.

Question 6 tells me that the majority of people would like the trailer to be short and snappy to leave them wondering about the film, 13 out of 17 people ticked this box however there is a minimum and maximum limit to the amount of time a trailer can be so I will have to consider the amount of information I reveal about the film rather than the length of trailer. 4 people said they would prefer it if the trailer was longer containing more information about the film.

Question 7 I ask "What features of the film would you like to see in the trailer?" here I asked people to tick more than one as I knew there would be more than one feature of the film people would be interested in. The Title of the film had 17 ticks being the most popular, the release date was second with 16 ticks. The cast had 8 ticks in total and the director only 3. No one write in 'Other'.

For Question 8 I wanted to know what was other peoples most scariest movie and why it had this effect on them:

The Exorcist (3 people)- "Based on a true story". "Costume and make-up was realistic".

The Woman in Black (1 person)- "The jumpy parts".

The strangers (2 people)- "Sense of reality, like it can happen to anyone". "I have a fear of masks".

The uninvited (1 person)- "I don't like the idea of children being murdered".

Paranormal activity 1/2/3 (4 people)- "ghost films scare me the most over any other type of horror".

Insidious (1 person)- "the loud noises and scary props/ costumes is scary for me".

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2 people)- "I'm not a big fan or gore". "I saw it when i was younger and it still scares me, I'm not sure why".

The Thing (1 person)- " I don't like the sense of loss of control".

There is a mixture of sub-genres here so it would be hard to determine which is the most scariest for my target audience.

Question 9 asks whether people prefer the villain to be revealed in the trailer, 9 people said yes and 8 people said no. This is hard to determine which side to go for so I would have to ask a bigger sample from my target market to get clearer results.

finally Question 10 asks "What makes a Horror trailer effective?" suspense was the most common with 5 ticks, I would have to agree as I feel suspense adds tension and a build up to a scary scene. Silence was ticked 4 times, possibly because silence has become a convention for when something bad is about to happen. Dark mise-en-scene was ticked 3 times such as dark lighting, screams and fast camera movements were ticked twice and other was ticked once with the answer being "successful narrative", having a successful narrative in a trailer is important as it draws the viewers into the story line making them want to see the whole film to know what happens.

problems from handing out questionnaires are that you may not get all questionnaires back so feedback is unreliable, unable to get detailed answers as most questions are closed requiring a one worded answer.