Question 5- how did you attract/address your audience?

Primary research was essential for my  production as it meant that I knew what my target audience would be and what to make my thriller film like. I conducted primary research by analysing other thriller films, researching the guidelines on BBFC certificates, the different narrative theories of the thriller genre and one of the most helpful forms of primary research was Vox Pox and questionnaires, which our whole group helped to carry out. From the primary research it helped us as a group to really understand what the audience would want from a thriller film, this meant that when we would think of a narrative for our own we could incorporate ideas that we got from the research to make our film better than it would be without the research.

Analysis of thriller films – during the research stage of the production of my own thriller film, I researched many different popular thriller films such as, Scream, Orphan, The Woman in Black and Halloween. I analysed many of the opening sequences, characters, settings, iconography and other contributing factors successful thriller opening scenes include, and this was also helpful when making our own thriller opening sequence as we had a good understanding of what good thriller films do, so we could take inspiration from them.

BBFC Research – I researched the BBFC and the different age certificates that are given to films, I looked at films in the thriller genre as I know I was making a thriller film, so it was relevant to my group. As I was looking at the age certificates for thriller films I noticed that most thriller films had been given a 15 certificate, which shows that they are not as violent and don’t contain strong adult themes that are often awarded to films in the Thriller genre. The 15 age certificate shows that thriller films build anticipation and suspense amongst the audience to give them the thriller film experience without relying on gory scenes to scare that audience. I felt that the 15 age certificate would be best for my own film, as it would be more enjoyable for audiences that don’t like gore, and it would be more suspenseful.

Narrative Theory’s –during the research stage of the production of our thriller film I researched the different narrative theories for thriller films. I found three theories that were popular but decided that the Todorov theory was the best for, as it was conventional to the thriller genre and worked well with the ideas for our narrative that I had already. After researching the narrative theories I feel that I had a better idea of what thriller narratives should be like.

Questionnaires – I carried out a questionnaire as a form of research, which was very helpful in understanding my target audience’s preferences when watching thriller films. The questions my group & I asked them were about the audiences age, gender, certificate, conventions they had seen, setting preferences, sub-genre. All these questions led to a conclusion for each person about the types of thriller films they like, and the majority of the same answers would be the style of thriller that we would make. All of group worked well together to get the results and we all asked the same questions.

Vox Pops – Vox Pox were helpful in researching the audience’s preferences of thriller films and I could meet the people and film them answering our questions. These answers were taken as inspiration for our own opening sequence to a thriller film. We asked questions about the thriller genre for example, ‘what is your favourite thriller film’ and ‘what part of the thriller film do you like most’.

The primary and secondary research that were carried out was very helpful in making a thriller film that attracts audiences and makes sure that people will like the thriller film I made as we made it with audiences preferences in mind, so without this research I wouldn’t know what audiences like in thriller films which would be bad because the film wouldn’t attract audiences and the film could get bad feedback.