Evaluation: Question 5 - How did you attract/address your target audience? - Miss Begum

Evaluation: Question 5

 

Importance of secondary research into existing films

Carrying out my secondary research is an important process in which when producing a film production allows me, the researcher, to gain relevant information about existing thrillers from my target audience before making any important decisions that may effect it such as, thriller conventions and characters. Its very important for my group and I to carry out our secondary research before creating our final product because we had to educate ourselves what made a successful thriller film and what didn't. Moreover, we wanted to get the target audiences opinions and ideas about their own  experiences and expectations when watching a thriller film, and what type of conventions provoke their psychological and physiological emotions. As a result, this made it easier for us to create a thriller production balancing out everyone's opinion on what makes a successful thriller opening.

The target audience of thriller films and our chosen target audience

From my research into thrillers, I believe that the target audience that hey appeal to consist f the following:
Age: 15 and over
Gender: Unisex
Ethnicity: Universal
Occupation: Education or employed
Hobbies and interests: Reading, sports
I believe that from thriller films the target audience enjoy suspense and tensed music. Moreover, surprises such as jump scares are really popular amongst teenagers.
Further to this, the emotions I believe they are likely to experience are both psychological and physiological emotions. Psychologically I believe that these common thriller conventions would make the audience feel scared, constantly thinking about what might happen afterwards. In addition, I also believe physiological, that the thriller conventions like the soundtrack, low-key lighting and setting may make the audience to shiver out of suspense. Moreover, hairs could possibly be standing up because of the chilling scene supported by these conventions.
We identified what age group that was commonly used in the thriller industry. They were generally teenagers from 15 and upwards, both genders from various ethnic backgrounds such as Europe, Asia and Africa (widely diverse). These teenagers are often still in education or in higher education, some worked part time and others worked full time.
In conclusion, this illustrates that people who are younger enjoy the excitement and tense films that thrillers provide in comparison to older generations who are likely to have experienced this before and do not find it that entertaining now. The target audiences hobbies do include going to the cinema often to relieve stress that might have from studying. This was the audience that we needed to attract.

I believe that from thriller films that my target audience enjoys are tensed music that builds up to the moment creating a good psychological and physiological response. Cinematography is extremely important such as including montages and low-key lighting which creates a more exciting and spine-chilling reaction. A thriller audience would massively enjoy seeing conventional characters such as the protagonist, antagonist and victim. These characters are extremely important in thriller films as the relationship between these significant characters evokes emotions from the audience which further creates excitement, fear or sympathy.

Moreover, the audience expect to see frightening conventions like specific iconography such as blood, mirrors and weapons all supported by dark settings. These dark settings could include dark and remote areas, empty rooms and dark alley ways which reflect the thriller genre creating suspense and fear. As a result, my group and I decided to use the iconography of mirrors to illustrate his two spilt personality. In addition, we also decided on a scene with our antagonist walking down a dark alley way to demonstrate his dark personality which would provoke our audience's response.

This was good research as it meant that for my thriller I had to consider:

• My target audience - The research I carried out with my group identified that the audience that often watches thriller films are teenagers in both genders. Males and females around the age of 15 and above from different, various types of ethnic groups seemed to be a social group that enjoyed thriller type films the most.

From my research, the target audience I wanted to attract for my thriller was:

• Addressing my audience - To get the right audience that I wanted for my thriller production. I created a questionnaire so I was able to get opinions and feedback form my specific target audience. The importance of a questionnaire is the follows my specific audience I'm targeting  get feedback directly in a short amount of time. A questionnaire is very effective as it helps me improve my thriller production with simple questions that is really simple to feedback. It gives me an insight of what thriller audiences might like and helps me plan ahead deciding on what type of choices I want to make.

I carried out a questionnaire because this gives me direct information from my target audience which are very simple and quick to fill out and as a result, I'm able to receive my feedback on the same day. These questionnaires consist of my target audiences opinions and expectations of a thriller film which helps me make appropriate decisions. Furthermore, it was an order to obtain as much information from the audience regarding what they like and dislike about thrillers, and what they want to see in future thriller films. The importance of my questionnaire was that it allowed my group and I attract our target audience because we wanted to receive direct and specific feedback to plan our opening effectively.

             

 

 

Some key questions I asked to ensure I was attracting my target audience:

 

• How old are you? - This question was one of the most important questions of the questionnaire as it helped me decide on important decisions like what age group I was going to attract. Furthermore, this questionnaire demonstrated the correlation in young people and thrillers, they showed that people in the age group of 15 and upwards enjoyed thrillers most. Those who ticked the 'no' box for the first question were usually 24+ which were quickly discarded.
• How often do you watch thrillers? - Question 5 asking how often this individuals watches thrillers is very important as it allowed me to focus on this specific social group and review what was it that made them watch thrillers. This would be beneficial as it helped me make important decisions using the feedback by this particular audience that are very familiar with thrillers.
• What is your favourite thriller sub-genre? - This was an important question to ask my audience to make sure what type of conventions I could being to my production to make it enjoyable depending on that particular sub-genre. 
• What do you find uncomfortable to watch? - This question is also a very important question to ask my target audience who will be viewing my production. I need to ensure that I don't make them feel uncomfortable therefore I asked them what particular option given in the questionnaire made them uncomfortable the most to avoid this.

Two quotes I got from my open ended questions that helped me make key decision to ensure that I was attracting and addressing my target audience:

• Question 15 asking the individual what past thrillers they've watched that they really enjoyed. This helped me massively as I was able to manipulate some of the conventions that was used in this thriller and apply it to my production and make it successful.
• Question 8 asked this particular individual what excites them about thrillers the most followed by some examples and asking them why. This question made sure that I was addressing my target audience correctly ensuring that I was including these themes.

                                

Overall, the primary research was important because it helped me build a successful thriller production using direct feedback that I was able to receive back on the same day.

Audience Feedback

After creating my production, I held a focus group because I needed constructive criticisms to see if there was anything needed to improve my thriller opening. I also got positive feedback but what was most important was the negative feedback I got. This was helpful as I was able to change it and make it more enjoyable for my target audience. The people that were asked to come in were around the ages of 15 and over who are my social group that I was targeting. Below are some criticism I received.

 

 

Audio Note Feedback

 

One bit of feedback I received was an audio note from Christine Broderick aged 18 (positive).

 

This feedback I got from Christine made me feel pleased as the use of cinematography used in my thriller attracted my audience well. She also stated that the cinematography I managed to capture built my characters representation really well. I'm very glad that although the antagonist was wearing dark and light coloured clothes to portray his split personality, the audience were still able to understand that he was the antagonist with the use of cinematography.

 

 

Feedback from Marlyn Ukah aged 18 (negative).

 



 

This made me think about the characters costume more in depth. Although I achieved good character representation through the use of cinematography, not all people were able to acknowledge his spilt personality.

 

 

Another feedback I got was from Trang Nguyen aged 18 (positive).



This made me happy that others did find the mise en scene good as it did help build up the characters representation.


I also got this feedback from my target audience named Kyra Davis-Emmons aged 18 (negative)



This was a valid point that Kyra made and it made me re-think what I could've done to create low-key lighting to make it spookier.