Target Audience Results - Miss Miller

This feedback from the target audience shows us that we are looking at a majority male target audience as this is who we asked most of out questions to. This could mean that we get much more conventional feedback such as an attractive female victim and chase scenes as this is more attractive to them. This also means that we may not get to see the aspects a female looks for in a thriller film.

The feedback from this closed question tells us that the majority of people we asked in this questionnaire was aged 16-18 years. This tells us that we are looking at a younger target audience and they may look for much more modern thriller conventions that have arose in the last decade, such as gruesome scenes. This may mean that we have to consider the feedback other ages gave us as well to gain ideas from different generations.

Here the majority of people we asked said that they either preferred age 15 or age 18 certificate films. This is a reflection of the majority 16-18 age group of participants in this questionnaire, as they are likely to prefer the older age certificates as they are catered for that age category. This also tells us that we may need to feature some mature content in order to appeal to the audience and make the clip a 15/18 age certificate. 

30% of participants said that they're favorite thriller film was Shutter Island and 25% said Inception, both of these films have very complicated plots and are both typical thriller films with low key lighting and many other thriller conventions. This tells us that we should create a opening scene that is complexed and leaves the audience wanting to solve the complication  Psycho, which is one of the older thriller films, only got chose by 10% of people as there favorite thriller film, this shows that it is a dated film and we need to make sure we include the modern day features of thriller films.

Here 43% of participants said that their favorite thriller sub genre is horror, this again reflects the gruesome preferences of the 16-18 age bracket. This informs us that we should include some sort of horror in our opening scene, this would be easily achieved through the use of creepy music and low key lighting. A lot of people also said that they like action as a sub genre to thriller, therefore we may include some sort of chase during our opening sequence.

Over half of the people we asked said that they are interested in a female victim, this could be because people feel like they need to help a female victim as they are much more vulnerable. This could also be because many people can relate to a female victim as they may have a Sister or Mother who they can draw connections with. This tells us to include a female victim in our opening sequence, which is also a typical convention of a thriller.

Three quarters of the people we asked said that they prefer the killer to have a hidden identity in thriller films. This tells us that a hidden identity creates suspense and fear among the audience as it is also a typical thriller convention. We are going to use this feedback to our advantage and use a clown mask to create a hidden identity for our killer. This hidden identity also links well with the horror sub genre that we are going to use in our opening sequence. 

From this question we discovered that the majority of participants said that they prefer to see 13 - 19 years old actors in a thriller clip. This could be a reflection of the fact that we asked a lot of 16-18 year olds to complete the questionnaire. This tells us that they want to see people who they can relate to as actors as they can then put themselves in the same position as the characters. Many people said that they'd like to see actors under 12, this is interesting as it tells us that although we may not usually expect to see young children in thriller films, it does interest the viewers.

Open Questions:

In our questionnaire we only asked one open question and that was "What setting do you like in thrillers?" The feedback from this question was that people like a setting that they can relate to such as a family house, but they like it to have a mysterious twist. However I feel it will be difficult to portray many of the conventions that we want to in a house, therefore we may make our setting outside.

Summary:

Overall the feedback that we have received from the questionnaire has been very helpful. It has made it clear that we need to include a horror element in this opening sequence and that we could do this through the use of hidden identity. Therefore we are going to include some sort of masked antagonist in our opening sequence and we are also going to include a female victim as this is what the majority of our target audience preferred. It has also been made clear to us that we should cast actors that are in their teens as this will create relationships between the characters and the audience. Although most of the participants said that their favorite thrillers were Shutter Island and Inception, we are going to take inspirations from the film Scream instead. 

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