tARGET AUDIENCE RESEARCH
From the target audience research it helped narrow down our ideas for our thriller film, based on what the target audience were interested in, to help produce a project to pleasure our audience.
In order to create a good thriller film, directors, producers, script writers and camera men/women need to understand their target audience. They need to understand who their film is aimed at in order to create the right film for that age group and gender. In order to follow up on this, they need to present conventions of their thriller through many different aspects of the film, such as camera shots/angles, lighting, music/sound, storyline and character ability. Below I have created a survey using survey monkey to understand who our target audience are and what they like from thrillers.
What is your gender?
How old are you?
Do you like thriller films?
What is your favourite sub genre of thriller films?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questons. As you can see here, I asked the respondents what their gender was, and the result was 50/50. Even though our main and only character is female, it is important to know the gender of the audience to understand we have to appeal to both genders. However, we understand that there is a lack of female lead characters compared to men and therefore chose to have a female lead character.
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here, I asked the respondents what their age was, and the age ranged from 16-25. It is important to know the age group of our audience as we need to appeal to this age group in order for them to enjoy our film. As most of the respondents were 16-17, we chose a 17 year old to act in our short film.
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked if the audience liked thriller films. It is important to know that your audience likes the genre of the film you are making and therefore this question had to be asked. As you can see 100% of respondents said yes.
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience what their favourite sub genre of thriller is. It is important to know the audience's favourite sub genre of thriller as you need to appeal to the audience, therefore we chose to make our short film a psychological thriller as it was the most popular choice.
What do you expect from the plot of a thriller film?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience what they expected from a thriller film. The choices were: Lots of crime/violence/death, lots of suspense/mystery/conspiracy, elements of confusion/psychological issues among characters and the battle between hero/villain. It is important to know what the audience expect from the thriller films so we can put these expectations into our short thriller film. As the audience expected suspense/mystery/conspiracy the most, we decided to base our film around these elements.
What characters do you expect to be in thriller films?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience what type of characters they expect to be in thriller films. It is important to know what type of characters our audience expect in thriller films as we need to appeal to our audience by using the characters they are most likly to expect. From this research our group decided to have a psychotic/mentally ill character.
Thrillers tend to have an element of suspense. What do you find builds up suspense in thriller films?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience what builds up suspense in thriller films. As suspense is a generic convention of thriller films, it is imporant to understand what the audience think builds up suspense the most so my group can apply it to our film. From this research we were able to apply music and sound while editing our film.
Have you seen any of the following films?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience if they had seen any of the following films. It was important to understand what previous the audience had seen so our short film differed from the films they had already seen, as the audience may have found our short film boring if it was too alike to the films they had already seen.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being least likely and 10 being most likely), how likely are you to to recommend a thriller film to a friend?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questions. As you can see here I asked the audience how likely they were to recommend a thriller film to a friend. It is important for film makers to know the expansion of their audience and how many views they could recieve from their films. In this case, most would have recommended a thriller film.
What do you find to be the most important element within the thriller genre?
This is a screenshot of the results of one of my questons. As you can see here I asked the audience what they found to be the most important element within a thriller genre. This is important because we need to know what our audience finds the most important elements within a thriller genre so that we can apply these elements to our thriller film to appeal to our audience.
By Skye Smith