Research Rationale

Research Rationale

For my research rationale, I will have to take into account certain aspects of my target audience and see what people are easily accessible. My target audience would be 15-25 year olds, as I have easy access to fellow students in sixth form as well as some teachers, which will give me an indication of what people in this age range enjoy about horror/what they fear and why etc, and see if there is any similarities with a 15 year old and a 25 year old.

For my audience research I will have to look at what people in the age range fear, and why they watch horror films. I will conduct research through doing online surveys and broadcasting it on various social media platforms such as Twitter, where I can reach a wider audience of those in the age range.  I will also conduct research in the real world, and do interviews and questionnaires with people I know who fit my target audience, as the more research I conduct, the more I will find out about my target audience and what they want from a horror film, as they are likely to be the ones to watch the trailer. On top of this, studying the reactions of my target audience when shown horror clips and trailers would also be useful in seeing how they physically react to what is shown, and what made it scary/not scary.

I will also conduct market research, and analyse different clips and trailers of horror films to see what conventions they share and what theme is most popular, e.g. ghosts, demons, or ‘monsters’ etc. Through looking at theories I will be able to spot conventions that are used, and how they are applied to horror films to make them scary and fitting for target audiences. Another way of researching into the market would be to see how horror films have been marketed, and what has changed about the marketing of horror films. For example, the way that horror films sometimes claim to be ‘based on a true story’.

The resources I will need for my research would be a camera when doing surveys/reaction videos of my audience, and I will use social media to conduct online surveys so I can reach more people and make sure my research is as accurate as possible.