Quantitative Questionnaire:
We decided to do a questionnaire in order to find out about what our target audience really wanted - we aimed the questions at and spoke to teenage females, but we also asked a few teenage boys and young adults.
From this, we realised that most people liked seeing males as leads - however, we thought that considering it was such a convention, we would subvert it and have a female lead. This would appeal more to female audiences.
From this data that we collected, we found that people preferred realistic thrillers to paranormal ones - thus, we decided to make a kind of thriller that seems eerily plausible. By using a common location and a common villain (a stalker) we could create a situation that could actually happen to the audience. This plausibility accentuates the tension created in the opening, as it isn't incredibly far from what could happen in someone's everyday life.
From these results we saw that most people preferred non-linear narratives; thus, our opening is a mix of non-linear and linear narrative. The flashbacks mean that further depth is given to the characters and the audience has a better understanding of what they are watching.
From the pie chart we were able to conclude that a vast majority preferred when the enigma code was surrounding the villain - thus, our antagonist is faceless, and this anonymity not only increases the plausibility of the thriller (it could be anyone) it also makes the audience feel as though they could be hunted by something invisible, that they don't suspect. We did also include aspects of the enigma code surrounding Scarlett's death - it isn't entirely clear from the opening what killed her, as there is no visible blood or anything.
Many found that they enjoyed thrillers more when they were based on a real story, but unfortunately we didn't have a real story to follow, so instead we made it entirely fiction.
