Target Audience for Our Thriller and Romance Film Opening
When brainstorming and researching we came up with the idea of doing a thriller/romance as a film opening, knowing our target audience was crucial in order to develop it . In order to ensure that our film opening would be engaging to the target audience, we decided to conduct an online questionnaire to test if the results aligned with the research we did online. The results from the questionnaire will greatly impact how we proceed in the production of the film opening.
We chose to start with quite simple questions and made it a multiple choice questionnaire, while also adding the “other” option on some of the questions that we decided to use.
The first question we chose to include was related to the gender of our respondents, where the majority of them voted for female, signifying that the audience we reached was predominantly female. However we did get quite a low number of responses which might not apply to the general population.
The next question we included aimed to find out more about the age of our respondents, which I will be analyzing later on in this post. However given the majority of the people that received our questionnaire, were our peers, the mean age was quite low.
The next question was related to their genre preferences, which was included in order to get a broader view of their viewing habits, and to see how often the thriller genre was voted.
The next three question was included to find out more about the audiences viewing habits.
This question was aimed to find out more about the demographic of our respondents( aka presumed target audience)
The last two questions were asked specifically to see if and how film openings may affect a person’s choice and enjoyment of movie.
Analysis of results
Age
The questionnaire results showed that the majority of respondents were aged between 14 and 18, making this our primary target audience, however the results may not be entirely valid as we did share the questionnaire primarily with our other high school peers. Hence, we will use the information gathered along with secondary data gathered from statistics that we found online, to increase validity of our findings. I do believe that younger audiences tend to appreciate films that challenge them to think, and question what is real and what is not, which are key conventions of the psychological thriller genre.
Because our target audience is within the teenage age range, as far as we know from our questionnaire, we will be careful to ensure that the content of our film opening is somewhat appropriate. Instead of using a lot of graphic scenes, we will be using ellipsis, in order to not cause distress to our audience but still effectively communicate the action and plot.
According to research on the internet, the target audience age range for psychological thrillers, is typically around late teens 16-18+ and it is appealing up to the age of 50+. This allows for a very broad target audience. However the mature content(could be psychologically demanding, distressing or even violent) that is typically found in psychological thrillers, may be distressing to the younger audience which is why we have to take into consideration the distress that could be caused by our film opening.
Commonly the age rating for psychological thrillers is 18+ with a mean age of the audience being 35.
Gender Appeal
Our questionnaire also revealed a slight female majority among respondents. As a result of our findings, we decided that the film opening should be catered to the female audience however, we aim to make it gender neutral and enjoyable to all genders. Psychological thrillers predominantly appeal to female audiences because they tend to focus on emotional depth and internal conflict, instead of action-driven films.
The research that we did online matched the results of our questionnaire, showing us that the male audience is less likely to enjoy a psychological thriller because of the lack of action, and they might prefer other genres such as action films or adventure films.
As a result, our film opening places strong emphasis on the internal state and emotional experience of the protagonist and the audience to empathize with her.
Viewing Habits
Another important finding from our questionnaire was that most respondents typically watch films on their TV or laptop int he comfort of their own home, which is a direct result of technological convergence. This influenced how we approached the production of our film opening. Since the target audience is more likely to view the film on smaller screens, we decided to prioritize: Close-up and extreme close-up shots to fully capture emotion and detail and subtle visual clues that can still be noticed on smaller screens.
Importance of the Film Opening
The questionnaire results showed that almost all respondents believe a film opening are important in choosing the film and it influences their enjoyment of the film, as well as whether or not they continue watching. As a result, our film opening will aim to create a sense of mystery from the very beginning, and we will establish the genre conventions early on using editing and cinematography.
Conclusion
Overall, our questionnaire results clearly defined our target audience as 14–18-year-olds however, upon further research, the common target audience is more mature but has a large range of ages, with a slightly dominant female audience, who typically watch films at home and are influenced by a film opening. Through the use of suspense, and emotional depth. We will use this information in our film opening to cater to the preferences and viewing habits of the target audience.
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