Question 4 & 5.Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Finding the right audience is key for any film. Before we planned our film opening we decided to research different audiences and identify our target audience. We used Pearl and Dean to find our target audience. This was done by looking at 10 different thriller movies- Taken and Non-Stop to name a few. We did this to find the average age of the viewers of the thriller genre.

How did you find your target audience?

Audience profiles on Pearl&Dean.

Our target audience

We found that the consensus told us that 15-24 year olds were the main audience type for thriller movies. Therefore we decided to target this age bracket. Also we found that it was mainly males who watched thriller movies meaning we targeted our movie mostly at the male gender.

This is one of the movies which we researched. It had a 62% male audience and had 38% of the audience were between the ages of 15-24.

In hindsight...

There were some films such as Side Effects which had an almost equal split, but with slightly more men. This was interesting and made us aware that we are also targeting women in some ways too. Obviously we only looked at 10 movies to base our research on, which for a student project is a good sample. However if we were making a whole movie we would need to take a much greater sample and do more detailed audience research.

The movie Side Effects was one of a handful of movies we researched that had a close split between male and female. It had a 57% male audience and 43% female audience.

After identifying our audience

Once we had identified our audience, we decided to use some of the same conventions of these existing movies by using camerawork, editing, sound and mise en scene that would be associated with the thriller genre.

Generic and original conventions

Once we had identified our audience, we decided to use some of the same conventions of these existing movies by using camerawork, editing, sound and mise en scene that would be associated with the thriller genre.

We decided that for a generic thriller movie we had to have a plot, which kept the audience thinking, and also include eerie music, which keeps the atmosphere of the film intense. Furthermore most the movies we researched also had deaths so therefore we decided to follow this generic convention

Generic and original conventions continued.

We had decided to have a balance of generic conventions but also originality so it was our work and not something we had copied. So therefore we had lighting, which was bright which, contrasted with many thriller movies as the lighting in them are dark. We also had text movement which was slow and ghost like which followed the conventions of a thriller movie as it builds suspense.

Our subversion of the typical dark setting in thriller movies and the ghostly text movement which followed the conventions.

Moreover the night setting we used was another follow of a thriller convention; the night setting connotes danger which keeps the audience wanting to watch more. The idea was to allow audiences to be able to recognize our film as being similar to those well-known thriller that they like.

Generic and original conventions continued.

We followed the convention of using the night time setting.

Conclusion

Our subversion of the casting, having an Asian leading lady could have alienated our audience. By this I mean that people who watch thrillers wont be use to seeing Asian characters and might decide that this is not the type of film they like. However on the plus side it might attract more Asian audiences. Although I think Asian people already watch thrillers so on reflection I could also lose audiences through this decision.