Evaluation - Q4 (Harsh Makwana)

Who would be the audience for your media product? Include audience feedback.

Target Audience:

As a group, we decided that our target audience for our thriller is 15-25 year olds, so it only seemed fitting to select the certificate of a 15+ for our thriller. As our thriller features both male and female characters, we decided to target both genders as we believe our thriller will appeal to both male and females and this will increase our amount of viewers.

As you can see in the list below, the age ratings of thrillers can vary; it all depends on the content of the product. 

We decided on our age rating for our thriller based on our research. As you can see from the results below, a large majority of those who answered our questionnaire belonged to the 15-18 age category. We decided to extend that range to 15-25 for our target audience as we believed we would obtain a larger audience. 

Although some thrillers have an age rating of 12 and some are even rated PG, we opted to stick for our 15+ rating as our thriller would:

• Contain some graphic violence further on in the film which is not suitable for younger viewers
• Dangerous behavior throughout which is also not suitable for the younger demographic
• Disturbing events
• Aspects of suicide 

Similarly, our thriller would not appeal to those over 26 as despite our best efforts to make our thriller realistic, they may still judge the plot and claim it to be unrealistic. It may also not appeal to the older demographic as our thriller would:

• Contain jumpy scenes which some people, especially of the older demographic, do not particularly like
• Loud sound tracks and sound effects which the older demographic do not tend to like

Below, I have embedded a couple of screenshots taken from the BBFC website, stating what elements of a film make its rating a 15: 

An Example of our Target Audience

Thriller Forms and Conventions

We targeted our audience by sticking to the many different thriller forms and conventions. For example, thrillers are very well known for creating suspense and tension. An example of this is when the protagonist's father is walking up the stairs. A black screen then appears with the sound of a door opening in the background. This also leads me on to another thriller convention: cliffhangers. Once the sound of the door opening is heard, our title pops up in the centre of the screen, so the viewer is left guessing what happened next, which is something that a lot of people enjoy. Another thriller convention which is evident in our opening is the feature of a psychotic individual, being our protagonist. We portray her psychotic nature through her interest in fire and matches, as she is shown burning happy family photos. Thrillers also tend to be set in a domestic environment, similar to that of our opening, which gives it a sense of realism and one which our target audience can relate to.

Another way in which we targeted our audience is through use of our research. A large number of those who make it into our target audience completed our questionnaire, so we as a group took on board what it was they expected to see in the first opening minutes of a thriller. For Example:

As shown above, many people said that they did not want the opening two minutes of a thriller to give away to much, and voted to find out "as little as possible". Taking this into consideration, we decided not to reveal the protagonist's father's face but instead, just to show his body:  

  

We also interviewed a couple of people and asked them to watch the opening of 'Se7en' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' and discussed the evident conventions of a thriller and how we would incorporate them into our own opening: 

Overall, I believe we were successful in reaching our target audience as everyone who gave us feedback said that it fulfilled the role of a thriller and had the makings of being a good film: