Final Story Board For Trailer

Male Audience Response

Method:
We asked a number of target audience members to watch the following thriller trailers and comment on what they found most appealing and what techniques used in the trailer they found most successful.



EDEN LAKE:

Analysis of the results from the focused survey

Gender

We asked an equal number of female and male teenagers to get an unbiased opinion from our target audience, which is not exclusive to gender. This allows for our results to be reflective of the whole audience, and not more suited to a particular gender.

Do you prefer to see male dominant characters or female?

We found that our audience preferred to see male dominant characters than female, which is important for the representation of gender throughout our trailer. With this information we can make sure our trailer appeals to our target audience by making the dominant character(s) in the group, male.

Do you prefer characters to conform or oppose stereotypes?

Our results showed that conforming to stereotypes was most popular, while the other forty per cent of our audience respondents chose either a variety of conforming and opposing, or just opposing stereotypes. Using this information we have decided that for the majority our characters should conform to the stereotypes of gender, social group etc, but that we should include aspects of characters that do not conform to the stereotypes. We feel this will both appeal to the audience preference but make the trailer more intriguing to watch.

Which title do you prefer?

From the two suggested titles our results showed that 'Ready or Not' was most popular with our target audience respondents. We have decided to use this as we believe it will be more effective in appealing to our audience and making our trailer more successful.

Which method of conveying information is most successful?

The results of our survey show that titles are the proffered method. Using this information we can make sure our trailer appeals to our target audience by using titles to convey any extra information as this seems to be more dramatic.

How much withheld information is most appealing?

Our survey showed that ambiguity, not revealing much information, is most popular in a thriller trailer. A revealing trailer was voted to be unpopular so we have decided to only give our audience the necessary information in our own thriller trailer, using the sense of the unknown to convince the audience to want to watch the film.

Which type of camera footage is more appealing?

Our audience respondents said that they preferred hand-held camera footage equally with professional 3^rd person footage so we have decided to continue with using a combination of the two in our thriller trailer, the variety making it more interesting.

Results of the focused audience survey.

Mood Board

We constructed some research into existing thriller film posters, looking closely a variety of thriller film posters and focusing on the font and style and colour of the titles they had use. We soon found that the majority of thriller advertisements were typical for having either red or white text, printed against a black or dark background, we immediately thought this worked really well and was effective, as it allows the text to be easily read, and also, fitted the conventions of the thriller genre. We also looked at the style of the font the thriller advertisements used, finding that they text was either bold, and capitalised, or a more fine and traditional font.

Mood board of some of the titles we thought were successful:

We decided that for our thriller trailer, we would like to use the more traditional style font, against a black background.

Focused target audience survey

Focused Target Audience Survey: Relating to the Thriller Genre.

Gender?

Female   Male

What is more appealing in a group of characters, male dominance or female?

…………………………

In a trailer would you prefer characters that conform to stereotypes, such as the male hero, and the vulnerable female, or characters that oppose the stereotypes?

Conforming to stereotypes        Opposing to stereotypes             Variety of both

Which title do you prefer?

Hide and Seek        Ready or Not          Any other suggestions……………………………

Would you rather a voice over or titles within the trailer?

…………………………….

Which do you prefer in a trailer?

Ambiguity            Revealing             Combination of the two    

Which idea do you think will make the trailer more successful?

A 3^rd person perspective      Handheld Camera video message 

First draft of story board