2. QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire asks questions which relate to certain aspects of my product. The questionnaire was given to 20 people after viewing the trailer. Participants were of a mixed demographic, a wide range of ages and equal gender.
4. OF THE FOLLOWING, WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE SUB GENRE OF HORROR? This shows the most popular sub-genre of horror to be the ‘human monster’ – the sub genre of my trailer. This positive feedback shows that my product has a high probability of being popular as it is of a popular genre. This could be said to support Coe’s ‘Tyranny of Genre’ theory as it suggests that genre dictates the popularity of a media product, rather than its content. I, on the other hand, felt genre helped scaffold my work. It helped me insert certain music, iconography and give a better mood to my piece, making it recognisable as a film of the horror genre.
5. DO YOU PREFER THE ANTAGONIST TO BE REVEALED IN THE TRAILER? The results for this question show a large majority of the audience to prefer an antagonist to be revealed in a film trailer. This deems my product to be a success as it reveals several antagonist characters towards the end of the trailer – a trait considered desirable by the results of this question.
6. SHOULD MAIN PROTAGONISTS BE FEATURED IN THE TRAILER? The results from this question show the audience to prefer protagonists to be revealed in the trailer. From the results of the last question, it is clear to see that participants of this questionnaire like the main points of a film to be made apparent in the trailer. One would assume they shy away from the ‘teaser’ style of trailers, and prefer theatrical trailers where main characters and plot points are revealed. These results deem my product a success as the protagonist is revealed in the trailer.
7. SHOULD THERE BE A LOT OF ACTION IN A TEASER TRAILER? Results from this question show that audiences prefer not to have too much or too little action in a trailer. I too felt this in the production stages and thus edited the trailer in to thee main scenes; the slide show, intimate house scene and the action scene. I only featured action in one of these scenes as I did not want to take away from the ‘teaser’ nature of the product. My decisions seem to have been deemed successful by the questionnaire result, as they call for ‘some’ action and my trailer contains, roughly, 25 seconds of action shots.
8. DO YOU PREFER A FAST OR SLOW PLACED TRAILER? The results of this question show the audience to prefer a fast paced trailer. My product was set to have both fast and slow paced scenes. This research shows me that more quick edits should be used in order to create more fast paced trailer.
9. ADDITIONAL QUESTIONs After screening the product for a second time, I asked the audience two open questions, with the view of testing Barthes ‘Death of the Autor’ theory on my work. The questions were simply;‘What was the main storyline of the piece?’ and ‘What representations were given in the piece?’ This generated more questions than answers, such as ‘Why are they attacking the house?’ and ‘How did they get into the house?’ When asked about the representation, the audience commented on the lack of shots that include the female character, and the fact she had no dialogue throughout the piece. These results challenge Barthes’ theory, which states that the creator of a media text does not define it’s meaning, the author does. I specifically set out to create an enigma and leave the audience to question the piece, and show the dominant male character through juxtaposition and editing. The audience picked up on the meaning I had created, showing my results to challenge Barthes’ theory.