Audience Research

On Friday 3rd February my group and I went around our college premises and asked our target audience to participate in being filmed whilst answering the questions we had previously formed for our target audience research. I think it went really well, most students we asked were happy to co-operate. We tried to not be bias in any way and have a group of students of both gender and any ethnicity.
From doing this research, it has shown me an insight to other teenagers similar to my age and their take on horror films. My research showed that my audience of 17 - 19 went to the cinema 1 - 3 times a month, or hardly went. The results that came back from the question ''if given a choice of genres what would you prefer and why?'' The answers that came back showed that 2 people preferred horror, one preferred psychological thrillers and one preferred thriller, the others preferred comedy, romance, action or science fiction. The fact that more people preferred horror over any other type of horror movie showed this was more popular within my target audience. I shall keep this in mind when I make my storyboard.
When asked 'What interests you in a horror movie' the most popular answer was the costume or what they wear. This shows that this is key when it comes to grabbing the attention of my target audience. Therefore I will try to make sure that my characters shall have interesting clothes that follow a typical convention for a horror costume. Other answers included 'tension', 'realistic setting' and 'the plot'. I will use these answers to create a good storyboard and an interesting opening sequence that my target audience will enjoy. I have the idea of the location being in a forest and a normal street, this helps the setting to be realistic as one of the students suggested.
The majority of my target audience said that the opening sequence was important, therefore I shall try my best to help make the opening sequence enjoyable and interesting so that my target audience will want to carry on watching it and be intrigued.
My target audience gave a mixed answer to 'should the main characters be introduced in the opening sequence in a horror'. The results did not give me a concluded answer so as the reaction was so mixed, introducing some but not all main characters would be a good idea.