Genre Research & Analysis

1) 58% of those that completed the questionnaire were male, 42% were female.

2) The statistics tell us that the two most popular horror genres were supernatural and slasher. From these results we can identify the fact that teenagers like supernatural films more that slasher films. Considering these results it would make more sense to make a trailer for a supernatural horror film. However this would be very hard due to factors such as budget, supernatural films consist of a fair bit of animation editing and special effects, something hard for us to achieve on our budget. It would therefore, be much wiser to make a film trailer for the slasher horror genre as it was the 2^nd most chosen horror genre.

3) The most favourite slasher film is ‘scream, 32% chose this film. This could be due to the cast, as the film consisted of a well known cast, this could have attracted more viewers. This also tells us that teenagers like masked murderers.

4) The most favourite film in the gory genre is ‘saw’ chosen by 58% of the participants. Out of the choices Hostel, Say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Cabin Fever, saw is the only movie that is primarily about torture, torment and dehumanisation. These statistics tell us teenagers enjoy watching torture/gore films.

5) The most chosen film in the zombie horror genre is ‘Shaun of the Dead’, chosen by 36% of those who participated. However this result is contradicting as ‘Shaun of the Dead’ is a comedy horror; therefore it is an anomaly within the horror genre.

6) The majority of those who participated, 28%, chose ‘The Ring’ as their favourite film in the supernatural genre, closely followed by ‘The Omen’ with 22% of the votes.

7) The most chosen film in the monster genre is ‘Jeepers Creeper’, chosen by 32% of those who participated. The killer in Jeepers Creepers is an actual monster; however he really resembles a masked figure.

8) The most chosen film in the psycho thriller genre is ‘Hannibal’. Nearly half the people who participated preferred this film. This is relatively a torture sort of film, it is cannibalistic.

9) The most chosen sub-genre of horror was thriller which got 34% of the votes, closely followed by supernatural which gt 30%.

Research Analysis

Question two of my genre research was ‘what is your favourite horror film?’ The purpose of this question was to find out what type of horror genre my target demographic enjoyed the most. Knowing what type of genre was preferred by the majority, meant that I would know how to appeal to my target audience. Results showed that the supernatural horror genre was chosen the most. However due to reasons such as budget it would be hard for me to produce a supernatural horror trailer, as the requirement of special effects and animation is quite high and very expensive.

The second most popular genre was the slasher horror genre. It would be wiser therefore to produce a teaser trailer for this specific genre. One main advantage of making a film/trailer for this genre is the fact of how appealing it already is to my target audience. There are many slasher films such as Halloween, the founding film of the slasher genre; many slasher films after Halloween have interpreted the techniques used in Halloween. Considering the fact that there is an array of successful slasher films, making this film appealing to the target demographic will be a lot easier. This means that the slasher genre already has an existing market, and this is very helpful for me as a genre film producer because it means there are existing generic codes and conventions I can follow.

The results from question three show that ‘scream’ was the most popular among the participants. The three most selected were scream, Freddy vs. Jason and Halloween. These three films all include a masked murderer. They share ideological context and as the results show these contexts are very popular among teenagers. This can be explained through intertextuality, teenagers may prefer these ideological contexts more as they can refer to other slasher films they have seen before.