Audience Research

We created a questionnaire on thriller films for our target audience (15-21 years old) with the hope that some would give their time to fill in a survey to help us gather information on how to create a successful thriller film opening that would attract the attention of the key demographic.

Our questionnaire asked questions based on the genre, settings and characters using a variety of both open and closed questions, so that we could collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The survey also asked for personal details such as age, gender and ethnicity so we could further analyse our results.

This pie chart represents the results of this question on our survey, 'What type of location/setting do

you find most effective in a thriller genre film?'

The data collected suggests that people from our target audience like thrillers that use a home

setting.

The second chart (bar chart) tells us that the majority of the target audience are very open and positive to the idea of a mixed romance/thriller genre film.

I intend to use this information to adapt how we create our thriller opening sequence in order to appeal to our key demographic.

We will try to find an effective way to film our thriller partly in a home setting, I believe people may find this an interesting setting for a thriller because they would be able to relate to it on a more personal level rather than a cemetery as people are not often in a cemetery and the idea is very cliched in this genre of film. During some planning sessions our group has discussed how we could approach this and have considered perhaps filming a sequence of close-up shots showing a man getting ready on his way to work, making something very normal seem quite sinister - inspired by the opening sequence of an episode of TV drama 'Dexter'.

Our synopsis will also partly reflect the romance/thriller genre as the idea proved very popular with the target audience, although it may not be particularly evident in the opening sequence.

Our target audience would stereotypically something like this. We intend to adapt our film to appeal to young adults of around 15-21 years old, smart, student-type characters who enjoy to have fun and relax as well as work hard. As our film would be quite psychological, it would require the full attention of the audience and the audience to be able to interpret ideas intelligently with a high attention span and attention to detail - hence our decision for sophisticated target audience. Thrillers also tend to appeal to this age group on a general scale.