ANCILLARY- Poster TA Primary Research

My first question I asked them on the poster survey was what information they would expect to see on a film poster. However my target audience answered this with a mainstream cinema large film in mind, whereas I'm making a poster for an independent small film. Upon my research I discovered there were noticeable differences in what information they displayed, as larger film contained a lot more, such as those voted for in the above screenshot.

Next I asked my audience what sort of image they would deem most appropriate as it's important to choose an image that will attract my target audience. A close up of two leading characters got the most votes, so I'm going to include my victim and serial killer- the most important characters.

I then asked for their colour palette ideas and black, closely followed by red got the most votes. This is unsurprising as crime comes with dark connotations- hence the choice of black, and red can represent blood. However I want to create a brand and therefore am planning on sticking with a dark blue theme as my morgue scenes were filmed using a blue filter, and it's the most visually appealing and important scene. In this sense I am breaking some conventions and going against target audience views but I feel it is appropriate and in the long run will make for a more effective product. 

Again the results I received were unsurprising as on most crime drama posters you will see the detective(s). This is because a majority of things that are crime dramas are TV shows rather than films, and these will more commonly follow detectives and have each episode follow a different crime. In films, however, there's less time and they have more creative freedom to instead choose the criminal to focus the storyline on, and therefore they will be the star of the poster instead. In our film our criminal/pathologist is the biggest character and the detective only plays a minor role, meaning it wouldn't actually make much sense for him to the focus of the poster.