Research into Target Audience - Miss Miller

Target Audience Research

The target audience is a specific group of people that a film is aimed at. For example, films rated 15 are made for an audience over the age of 15. Whereas films rated PG are made for the younger audience of around the age of 8. By knowing who the target audience is, filmmakers and producers become more aware of what elements they can and cannot include in their film. Films that are aimed at the younger audience will not contain detailed violence or bad language that may be seen in films rated 18. Our group carried out the research in order to find out what people want to see in a thriller film. We will be able to use this information to develop our group narrative and appeal to our target audience. The purpose of asking 40 people the questionnaire was to give our group a wider range of results about what our target audience want to see in a thriller film. This way our thriller film will appeal to a wider audience, therefore making it more successful. Our group will use the results from our questionnaire by incorporating the information that we received into our opening sequence. For example, the majority of the 40 people that we asked would prefer the location of the scene to be in a remote place. Our opening sequence will be set in an old house which we believe will meet these wants, and help to build tension and an eerie atmosphere.

Our questionnaire is:

These are the pie charts that show the results from our questionnaire:

As the pie chart shows, the majority of the 40 people that we asked our questionnaire to were male, meaning that our results may not show the accurate opinion of how women feel about the thriller genre. If we were to do the questionnaire again we should make sure that the balance of genders answering the questionnaire is more evenly spread.

The pie chart shows us that overall 36 out of the 40 people were over the age of 15, which is the age that we have identified as our target audience due to our film having the age certificate of 15. This means that the results from our questionnaire are the opinions and preferences of our potential audience, and by knowing what they want to see in a thriller film and then incorporating those ideas in our own sequence, we will be able to make our opening sequence the beginning of a film that our audience will want to watch.

85 percent of the people who answered the questionnaire enjoy watching thriller films. This tells us that the thriller genre is a popular one, therefore there will be a large group of people interested in seeing a new thriller film that we will have to try and appeal to as a potential audience. When we are creating our thriller film, as well as our target audience, we have to think about the viewers that are older than our target who can still view the film, and also the younger generation who as they get older may want to watch the film.

Just over half of the people who answered the questionnaire say that out of all the film genres, thriller is their favourite. Those 22 people, through watching many other thriller films, will have a better understanding of what they like to see in the films and what they do not. This will help our group when it comes to creating our opening sequence as we can use the opinions and preferences from our target audience to develop a narrative that they will want to watch and that incorporates elements that they want to see.
 

The majority of the people asked said that their favourite thriller film was either Psycho or Shutter Island, which are two well known thriller films. As a group, we can watch and take inspiration from theses films that we can then incorporate into our sequence. For example, Shutter Island uses low key lighting often to create suspense and jump scares. Psycho, on the other hand, keeps the identity of the killer hidden well through the use of costume in which a man is dressed to look like a woman.

28 out of the 40 people prefer watching thriller films that keep the villains identity hidden, due to them believing that it would help to create an enigma and build suspense as they would not know who the killer was. In our opening sequence, we have not planned on keeping the identity of our antagonist hidden. However, we have planned on showing the character from both sides of his split personality which we believe will make him appear more mysterious as the audience will find his character difficult to work out, which in some ways is similar to him having a hidden identity.

The majority of the people who answered our questionnaire believe that by setting the film in an isolated location it will add to the tension and create more of a mysterious atmosphere. In our opening sequence, our group have decided to set it in three different locations that we believe will appear isolated, these are an old house, a school 'boiler room' and an empty bus stop on the side of the road.

The pie chart shows us that out of the most common sub themes in the thriller genre, psychological is the most popular with 18 votes. This tells us that our target audience like having to think about what they're watching and so a film that is more mentally engaging will appeal to them. There will be so much about the characters in our thriller film that the audience will not know and we believe that this will engage our target audience. Also, the use of an enigma at the beginning and end of our sequence will keep the audience engaged in what they are watching.
 

As the results show us, half of the 40 people want to see a jump scare in the thriller film, and the same amount of people do not. When we were creating and planning our opening sequence, our group had not planned to incorporate a jump scare into it. Although, during the dinner scene the antagonist suddenly launches across the table and begins stabbing his mother which the audience may find similar to a jump scare.

As well as being one of the most typical murder weapons in a thriller film, the pie chart shows us that knife is also the most preferred by the 40 people. Our group has planned to use a knife in our opening sequence when Cameron is killing his mother. If the target audience associate the knife with the thriller genre, through the use of the knife they will be able to identify that our sequence is the opening to a thriller film.

Vox Pops

Vox Pops, a type of primary research, are interviews that are carried out with members of the public using the radio or television. Each member of our group were given the task to ask three different people the questionnaire that our group had created, the purpose of which was to find out what people in the age group of our target audience and other potential audiences want to see in a thriller film. We made Vox Pops of our questionnaire as they are a type of qualitative data that will give us a detailed idea of how our target audience think and feel about the thriller genre, and we can therefore create an opening sequence that will appeal to them.

Through asking those 40 people what they want to see in a new thriller film, my group were able to identify the preferences that our possible audience have, and then incorporate those results into our opening sequence by developing our already existing group narrative. For example, Cameron will use a knife to kill his mum, which was 20 out of the 40 people asked preferred weapon of choice. By using the results in our opening sequence our film will appeal to those who answered our questionnaire, and hopefully to people of a similar age group. If we were to carry out the research again, our group could have created more questions that related to the group narrative that we had already developed. For example, we could have asked the 40 people whether they would enjoy watching thriller films that begin with an enigma, which for our group is the suicide of the antagonist, Cameron. This way, if the majority of the people had said no, we would have been able to change our narrative to suit a wider audience. We could have also asked more younger people what they would want to see in a new thriller film as they are the next generation who will watch these films.