Research into Target Audience- Miss Miller

Research into target audience

The research we did needed to be carried out so that we could understand the audience that our film was targeting, for example what type of audience would like a hidden identity. We had to ask 40 people as this would determine who our audience is and 40 people would mean that there are a lot of different opinions about different conventions in a thriller, it shows that the research gathered is varied. The results that we have accumulated will shape our film to be what the most of the audience want as this would mean we are actually listening to the audiences opinions and as this for them, they would know best.

The first pie chart is a question about the people we're interviewing, the question is are you male or female, this determines which gender our thriller film will be targeted towards and as you can see we have asked more males which means our thriller is targeted towards males, though you can say it just the amount of the specific gender we talked to and that doesn't mean we are alienating the other gender, in other words, we just happened to interview more males than females.


The second question is a bit more important than the first, as this is something that is defining our target audience. their age so then we will look over our film idea and see if it will be an 18 or a 15 rated film. our target audience for this are 15 to 18 year olds, so to make sure our target audience are not being alienated we will have to hit the 15 rated criteria which means we will have to tone down some specifics in the film for example swearing may be very minimal to compensate for the dark theme that surrounds this film.


The third chart tells us the sub-genre that is best that goes well with a thriller film, so this tells us that psychological thrillers are prefered more than a crime or action thriller. What these results mean is that we would have to show something twisted about the human mind, as the story we have based ours on will have a dysfunctional antagonist so we may show the aspect that he is twisted and deranged. However we have to take into account that this is only an introduction to a thriller film so not much about the antagonist will be revealed so early on in the film. I would say we would need to incorporate a point of view shot with a hand held movement to convey his sick twisted mind and psyche.

The fourth chart shows our target audience prefers a female victim than any other gender. The reason behind this is because women or girls are commonly associated with being fragile and innocent, it isn't very nice to say that they're prefered but it has worked out that way throughout the history of thrillers. However, our target audience want the female victim so this is something that we will include into the intro as this is the common opinion for our audience. We will use a female for our introduction to be the victim.




The fifth chart represents what location or setting in a thriller film is most popular within the target audience we are reaching out for, the chart says that abondened houses are more of a popular choice, however this will be hard for to do as finding an abondened house is very difficult however abondened forests can be much easier to film in so we will implement this in our film by filming at a forest at night so not many people will walk past.


The sixth chart shows that gory thrillers, this means there is blood and human entrails that are exposed in thrillers, are more prefered. The reason for this is because the gore can emphasize the amount of danger that the characters are in as it makes it seem a bit more realistic. This will be something that must be included into our film but as said before we cannot alienate our audience so not too much gore as if we get lots of it on screen the film will become an 18 there fore blocking out potential target audience.



The seventh chart tells us that our target audience prefer our antagonists or villains to have a hidden identity or remain a mystery to our audience throughout the majority of the film. This means that when we start filming we will have to make sure that the antagonists face is not clearly shown, not much back story is given about him and that he doesn't talk as this will create enigma and suspense about him for the audience and both are conventions to a thriller film.




The eighth chart shows us what films our target audience liked previously and the chart says that from an inspiration standpoint we should be taking it from fight club which again comes under psychological but not a typical thriller the way we will film ours. What we need to do is watch fight club and take as much inspiration from that film as we can and try to input as much of the style of fight club into our film that we can.





The ninth chart shows the audience that we have questioned shows that a gun would be prefered as a weapon in our thriller film. We will use a gun in our opening sequence to a thriller film as the target audience have said that it is their favourite weapon to be used, however we need to make sure that their is no death at the beginning as this would then ruin the narrative that we have already set up for the rest of the film, but we will implement this for our film.





the final chart of the all the questioning we did was to ask the specifics of what they like about the thriller genre including the conventions you see throughout all of them. shock seems to be the highest on this list according to our target audience which means that when we start filming we will have to add some shock into the sequence to show that we are reaching out towards our target audience.




Finally here are some vox pops I filmed of three individuals where I would ask the questions that were part of the questionnaire. This is proof that I have gone out there and asked people for the opinion and beliefs about the thriller genre including what they prefer.

What I found most useful while doing this research is the fact that these answers mean that they are all shaping the film themselves and we're just trying to make produce and create an idea by using all this information gathered from the questionnaire, this therefore leads us to believe that this film will be successful as this is what the target audience want. We will have to talk about how to incorporate all of this information into our film but some may be too much of a problem to introduce so we may have to let a few ideas go. If i were to carry out this research again, I would make sure that there was communication with group members more often than there was for us, we did communicate just not very frequently.