We asked an equal amount of men and women to gain a fair view of horror films between both sexes.
Most people prefered an unknown cast. This could be because it enhances the realism of it, whereas if a well known actor played the killer, the audience would always be aware that it wasn't real. An unknown cast might make it seem more real and therefore scarier. If a massive star played one of the main characters, it's most likely that they won't be killed off because they are the star of the film and therefore getting paid a lot, so it would remove some of the initial suspense.
As the most popular settings were houses and mountains, we wanted to stay away from this to be slightly unconventional and instead decided to set the trailer in a school, in order to fool the audience into initially thinking the school would be safe. However, it turns out to be the setting of many murders committed by a student. However, in order to keep in with the conventions, and to avoid making it completely unconventional, which could lead to people not understanding and the film being a flop, we decided to set part of the trailer in a woodland area, because this was one of the popular choices, gaining almost a quarter of the votes.
Due to the inspiration from the mood boards and the obvious winner in this question (27% of the votes), we were excited to begin thinking about our plot for our psychological horror. We decided not to go for the thriller genre because we could be more creative with a pyschological horror in terms of the twist. We also decided not to go with the third most popular choice (ghost film) because it would not be easy to achieve, because many of the haunted/ghost films we have seen use special effects to convey the presence of ghosts.
Due to the feedback on camera shots, we decided to use mainly conventional shots, but with a few handheld shots, to give it an immediate realistic quality, which could potentially make it more frightening for an audience.
