Meeting the audience's expectations

To ensure our horror movie opening would be enjoyed by the audience, we devised a survey, to ask their opinions on different aspects of the opening.

Therefore we decided to use parallel music. The majority of horror films use this type, as using contrapuntal risks the scare-factor, of  a horror film.

 

A cut arm was the least popular so we left that out all together, but we used both a wound on the forehead and a slit throat, to make our opening gory.

Several people mentioned creepy photographs, as a key part of the mise en scene, so we made sure to include that. The location we chose was dark, dirty and cold- and we used a lot of blood, so we definitely met the audience's expectations here.

The clear winner for location was 'an isolated shed'- and this also happened to be quite an easy place to get access to. Ideas like a hospital, and a mental institute would be very effective, but almost impossible to find.

Similarly with the villain, the audience wanted a realistic horror opening- so 56% of them opted for an old fashioned murderer, rather than a creepy ghost girl, clown or doll.