Q5: How did you attract/address your target audience?

Q5: How did you attract/address your target audience?

It is important to carry out secondary research, before attempting to produce a film, in terms of the target audience. This includes drawing up information on other existing movies of your genre; consisting of things such as their target audience, their actual audience, and how they achieved it. Compulsory to filmmaking – every producer needs inspiration for concepts and ideas as well as improvements later on. Getting in tune with how the film world works around different audiences is beneficial to the creation of your own content. Every film needs a target audience because ultimately the profit providers are the general public.

Before producing any kind of product intended for the entertainment of the public, there needs to be a general idea of the target audience. For instance, a thriller movie typically attracts people either aged 15 and over or 18 and over, with an interest in the actual genre. There are more personalised opinions from people about thrillers, rather than just if they like that kind of movie or not. This is why a questionnaire is relevant towards everything about the production of a movie, including finding out about the use of its conventions, connotations and symbolism. Those are just a few subjects which you can carefully embed into a questionnaire through some interesting thriller-related questions. These results are necessary because the potential viewers of your final creation will most likely be more or less the same ones who answered the questions. There is no point in making something for the public if there is no notion on what they want, don't want and what they generally expect. Everything that gets collected from a questionnaire is primary research and beneficial to the adjustments you make to your production, based on what your audience wants.

As a part of my planning, I created my own research into different aspects of my thriller that I was unsure about – sure as the structure in question 20 (they had to pick ‘chronological’ or ‘unexpected’ and explain why). It starts off with the generic demographics and leads into broad questions about what they would want/expect from any new kind of thriller. Then I ask more specific questions to get an idea of how I should make my opening conventional. In addition, some questions focus on the comfort of the viewer, for example being asked about what may offend them.

 What is your name? _________________________________________

2.        Are you a MALE or a FEMALE?

3.        How old are you? 10-15 | 16-22 | 23-27 | 28+

4.        Are you a STUDENT or EMPLOYED or RETIRED?

5.        Do you enjoy watching thrillers? YES | NO

6.        Do you prefer a 15 or an 18 thriller?

7.        If a new thriller were to be made, what would you want? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8.        What would you expect? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9.        Do you get a chilling response when you watch a thriller? YES | NO

10.     What do you think is the most common dilemma in thriller movies? __________________________________________________________________________________

11.     Do any of these thriller aspects offend you?  RELIGION or SEX & NUDITY or DRUGS or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY or CONTROVERSY or CULTURE or VIOLENCE or RAPE

12.     What is your opinion on oppression/discrimination/persecution within thrillers? __________________________________________________________________________________

13.     Is censorship important & what would you like to be censored? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________

4.     Should there be any languages other than English spoken in the newest thriller? Specify. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

15.     What particular genre of music would you like on a thriller soundtrack? POP or ROCK or INDIE or SOUL or JAZZ or SCREAMO or ALTERNATIVE

16.     Does the plot of a thriller seem more appealing when distributed in an INDOOR area or an OUTDOOR area?

17.     At the beginning of a thriller, do you prefer NORMALITY or DISRUPTION?

18.     At the end of a thriller, do you prefer a SOLUTION or a CLIFFHANGER?

19.     Which of these personalised character themes would you be most interested in?  DEPRESSION or MADNESS or SEXUALITY

20.     What kind of a structure suits a thriller – CHRONOLOGICAL or UNEXPECTED? Elaborate why. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21.     Should the main character be GOOD or EVIL?

22.     Should the main character be MALE or FEMALE?

23.     Are the victims of thrillers usually MALE or FEMALE?

24.     How many friends or family members do you know that watch thrillers?  0-5 | 6-9 | 

Some specific results caught my eye in which I chose to include when making decisions, such as two ’20. What kind of a structure suits a thriller - CHRONOLOGICAL or UNEXPECTED? Elaborate why.’

·         “I think an unexpected storyline would be best, the whole point of a thriller is to build up to some kind of scenario that we’re not going to expect. It’s alright to have some confusion as everything gets revealed in or near the end.”

·         “I’d say it depends on the plot but really, generally, in the thriller genre there are a lot of jumps and ‘whodunit?’ which of course has to be accompanied by something beyond our imagination. Audiences gets manipulated but we love it.”

On the whole, the people asked settled for unexpected over chronological. It seems like a very specific question, but when put to the test practically, it shapes the way a whole film flows. This is why I place importance on these answers as I am willing to agree. Certain keywords such as ‘best’, ‘we love it’, and ‘generally’, tell me that others would also go for the same option, hence enough reason to stick with unexpected as the typical fan of thrillers appreciates this.

This research of questionnaires has been beneficial to me because previously I could not see the importance of collecting data on a person's opinion, but now I understand that if you collect the right feedback from an intended audience, the outcome of the production is most likely going to be better than it previously would have; without any notion of what the audience, the ones with the money, would or wouldn’t waste time on.  But making my own questionnaire has taught me that it's a massive teamwork between you and the public, the decisions are a mixture of everyone's wants & needs. I think my questionnaire helped me developed my ideas because being new to the entire thriller sector of film world, I had but a vague idea on what the conventions are and which the audiences prefer. My aim was to make a typically conventional opening; so the general opinion has been very useful.

After collecting my results, I analysed the majority of them, I created graphs to represent the data and feedback I received. I talked about why I asked a question and how this relates to my groups’ ideas on the same topic - this is important because both the public and the makers of a production should be satisfied, so a balanced preference on both sides is most ideal.

To the right is an illustration of some of the feedback I collected. On display are questions 5, 6, 9 and 11. Each question has a graph representing the data collected from that question, and an explanation on why I asked, what I found and how it’s impacted my groups’ decisions.

This research thoroughly helped me determine what I would actually do within my production - specifically and generally. For example, generally, a 15 thriller would strike up lots of anticipation. Specifically, members of the audience will sub-consciously feel more in tune with the main character if they are a female. These assumptions are based on questions from my own research.

Overall, analysing the feedback of my questionnaire gave me a stronger awareness on what the thriller audiences’ wants consist of. To my benefits, most of the conclusions matched up to my initial ideas – for example, in question 11, the most offensive aspect was voted paranormal activity. This helps me because in my plan I had formed the idea of a demented woman in an asylum experiencing flashbacks with unstable reactions. Generally, from my research, this theme is liked, so I continued it into my film-making. Next time, I would like to ask a wider range of people (as this questionnaire was handed to only twenty people), and ask more in-depth questions.