Final decisions based on the questionnaire results:

Decisions we made based on our results from our questionnaire:

Based on the results from the questionnaire, as a group, we had gathered some good ideas based on what people regarded as typical of a horror film. We looked at the questions that specifically looked at the horror genre and decided to use the answers from each question in our final piece so that we could be as accurate to the required conventions of horrors as we could. The fact that we also asked a wide range of people from different ages and ideas about horrors helped us alot as we had not yet decided on the distinctive age group for our 2 min opening to our film.

For an example, the question where we asked them, "How often do you watch Horror films?" the general answer that we got from the majority of people that we asked was monthly. However, this was not a great help as we needed evidence that showed us the best things to use in our piece. In the question where we asked them, "which of these aspects do you think are the most important in making a horror scary?" the main answer(s) that we got were lighting and use of camera (i.e. movement shot etc.). Fortunately this linked well with our aim and also the fact that most horrors dwell and heavily depend on the use lighting and camera. Lighting plays a key role in the traditional horror because the mood of the film can change dramatically depending on the lighting. For an example, a haunted house during daylight is much less scary than during the middle of the night.

We wanted to make sure lighting and use of camera (angles, movement, shots etc.) were he main focuses throughout our opening. We decided to use lighting as our main theme and we wanted a variety of shots that implicated the change in light based on the mood of the character(s) and also the mood of the scene. The other question we wanted to focus on in order to get an idea of what to use was question 8. This was when we asked our target audience, "what makes the best setting in a horror?". The common thread that kept coming out was that people wanted the setting to either be ordinary places such as offices bedrooms or derelict, abandoned houses. This was also helpful as most horrors are set in places you least expect and are usually very simple as the director wants the audience to concentrate on the scene and/or the characters emotions portrayed through their facial expressions, body language etc.

We wanted to keep and maintain the idea of simplicity throughout our film but we also agreed to try and make it unique and not like traditional horrors. This complimented the results we got from our questionnaire as the other options were all too predictable and had already been done in proper horror films. For an example in question 8 which talked about which setting is best to use, the other choices were a haunted house, 'scary' castle etc. These two other choices were very plain and had been done many times before in real horrors. Thankfully, the most popular choices (abandoned buildings etc.) were not common in horror films which went by our aim, which was to keep the plot simple but maintain a sense of uniqueness.