Questionnaire: PRE PRODUCTION

As a group we decided to construct a questionnaire so that we

could gain feedback before we started filming. This gave us
knowledge as to which genre of thriller is most liked at
Reeds school. It also gave us an idea as to what target
audience that our final product will appeal to.

The survey was created on survey monkey. It was then emailed

around on the schools system, which was done by students and
staff. We received 100 completed responses that we took into
account when planning our final product.

The questions that we formulated are shown below.

1) How old are you?

0-19
20-39
40-59
60+

Question 1 result
Although we sent it around the school email, we vaguely knew before
hand which age category the majority of results were going to come
from.

Although there are many criticisms within the age range because the
first answer column is 0-19, which is very ambiguous as, it does not
give us a precise age range. Considering our age range for our final
product to be targeted at is 18-49.However it was very useful which
type of conventions older people liked/ disliked in their thrillers
they have watched.

2) What is your gender?

Male
Female
Question 2 results
We decided to include this question despite there being a
significantly 70% more males at the school. This helped us more
than we needed because our thriller is quite a dark/horror thriller
and stereotypically, males are more likely to watch these types of
thrillers.
 3) What are your preferred thriller
types?
Psychological
Crime
Action
Political
Horror
This question was vey useful as it gave us a clear result of what
reeds students liked. Although it is not the result we hoped it to
be. Regardless we decided to keep out thriller within the horror
genre. However we concluded the fact that that, because the
majority of people were in the ages of 0-19, the access to the
thrillers they had must have been action thrillers due to the
action thrillers certificate being 12A.

4) Which character is the most essential

to a horror thriller?
Police
Stalker
Murderer
Criminals
Mental patients
Victim
This result was very pleasing as our idea revolves around many
victims. The convention victim scored very highly and this could
be due to a number of reasons. As well as this we decided to ask
this question it helped us decide who the protagonist and agonist
are.
If our main character is what are audience preferred then the
target audience are more likely to watch the final product.

5) Which conventions do you

find most important in a
horror thriller?
Mystery
Suspense
Tension
Plot twist
Heroes and villains
Tension plays a big part in our plot because we are aiming to do
our whole production in one shot. Similarly this result is very
pleasing because 54.55% agreed that tension is important in a
horror thriller. Moreover the reason we asked this question is to
help us plan and how we are going to shot our thriller to build
tension and to make it more appealing to the audience.

 6) What time of day do you think a
horror thriller should be set?
Dawn
Day
Dusk
Night
We asked this question, although we knew which time of day we wanted
to set it in. We knew that night was going to get the highest vote
with 51.0% because it creates a darker mood. However we decided that
we did not want to go with the similar type of day that most horror
thrillers are. Therefore we have decided to set our thriller at dusk.

7) What age group do you

think would enjoy a
horror/thriller?
0-12
13-19
20-30
31-55
56+
As you can see from the results 13-19 are more likely to enjoy
horror thrillers. This caused us to re-evaluate our target audience
and to make it suitable to teens that have just become young
adults.

8) Which of these elements are important in the

opening of a horror thriller?
Titles
Flashback or flash-forward
Narration
The source of the horror
Presenting the main character
(protagonist)
A frightening event
A sense of fear

Since we are creating the beginning of the film, we dont want to

give everything away at the start. However the audience have
concluded that they think sense of fear is essential to the
beginning of the thriller. This was an essential question as it
makes our product more appealing to our target audience.
From this survey we then started the process of
making our thriller in relation to this
questionnaire and seeing what we could improve on
our original idea.