Target Audience Research - Hurtwood

This week, one of our tasks is to discuss who it is that would want to watch our film and from this we can learn what it is they like and how we can develop our opening sequence to benefit them in the best way possible.

From doing my research and asking the public their opinion, I've discovered that typically the people who are most interested in watching thrillers tends to be people in their late teens and early 20's. This is because the majority of thriller movies have at least a certificate 15 on them because of violent scenes and elements unnecessary for younger children.
Gender wise, there seemed to be a mixed response -- some people said men where more into Thrillers because of the darkness and violence that was included in scenes, yet some people argued that woman watch more thrillers than men as they seek the rush and thrill that they get from these movies a lot more than men; therefore getting more out of the film itself.

A way in which we discovered peoples opinions on films that they have seen and what it is they enjoyed was to do a questionnaire. We surveyed a variety of people of ages 15 and above and of both genders - this was so we could get an overall idea of what a range of people like and consequently hope to broaden the typical type of people who go to watch these films.

This is a wordle I created using a montage of attributes taken from my survey that I did. It is a satisfying, visual way of viewing certain things.

The questionnaires enabled us to get a clearer idea of what kinds of people like what and from this we were able to take the positive things people like a build from it. For example the feelings that people get when they watch a film and how this is created. A woman of 22 said that she liked how Thrillers made her feel tense and uncomfortable and she thought this could be as a result of the diegetic music that accompanied the scene; here she refereed to Jaws.  This element signifies how important the sound is in a film, so this is an aspect that I'd like to focus on when producing our own thriller.

Another result that I found predictable was what a 15year old male said about the thrillers he likes. He enjoys Thrillers that are quite violent and scary in a gory way. By the way that he explained it I would say that he was referring to Horror more so but he insisted that there was a big difference in his opinion towards thrillers and horrors. I personally don't think that I want to use too much gore type scenes in my Thriller opening for a few reasons. Firstly to produce something of a high, realistic quality is extremely difficult. Also this is an opening sequence and I think this would too much of an 'aggressive' start to a film, and it may make the audience feel uncomfortable in a negative way.

My conclusion based on this research is that our disaster thriller would appeal to an audience aged between 15-30 of both men and women.