Audience Research

Audience Research

Identifying, enticing and satisfying a particular target audience is key to a film’s success. A good film balances a niche audience with the mass market. When catered for correctly, a niche audience gives a predetermined market that can be accessed by deploying the audience’s particular wants and needs through the codes and conventions of the relevant genre. However niche audiences tend to be small and as a result, no film can perform to a high standard on a commercial level without also appealing to the mass market. This in turn may cause elements of the film to follow a more “mainstream” pathway.

The audience for thriller films

Thriller within film contains many different sub-genres and hybrid genres, ranging from legal thrillers, such as A Time To Kill, to hybrid horror-thriller films, such as The Exorcist. irregardless of the varying sub-genres, the main demographic for a thriller film is said to consist of:

• 18 – 30 age range - due to the explicit nature of thrillers, and darker themes which are often explored. The fast pace and violence may work to divert some older viewers.

• Predominantly male - whilst many females do enjoy thrillers, it is seen to be a male dominated genre, perhaps again due to the violence, the representation of women and the darker themes.

The broad psychographic for the thriller genre would be:

• Thrill seeking - this is main gratification the audience gains and the reason why they watch a thriller - so as to be thrilled. The audience will seek to be shocked, have the plot twist and turn, and to be subject to tension, suspense and enigma throughout.

• Intellectual - most thrillers centre on a well developed plot and therefore challenge the audience’s viewpoints and understanding of the fictional world they find themselves in. The audience will tend to be interested in solving the enigma the thriller creates.

• Intuitive - thrillers tend to revolve around darker psychological and/or socio-political themes. This appeals to the human trait whereby we are captivated by censored or grotesque material. The psychological and socio-political themes would further appeal to audiences eager to probe into more complex stories accumulated around these themes.

The thriller that I am hoping to create would be a more specified sub-genre of thriller, whilst still being recognisable as a thriller film. I plan to create a psychological crime thriller, which explores elements of Tarantino’s post-modernist style. I believe the psychological elements of my thriller, along with the crime aspect, would entice avid film and thriller fans due to other successful psychological crime thrillers they may have viewed - for example, Se7en. This would be my main target audience. However it is a niche audience and is therefore small in it’s size. In order to compensate for this, I plan to use some of the more entertaining elements of Tarantino’s style of film to ensure that my film would appeal to a wider audience so as to be a success on a more commercial scale. I also want my film to be influenced by Tarantino  in this way as it would allow me to subvert some aspects of the thriller genre, henceforth creating a more entertaining, even humorous tone, similar to American Psycho as this may make my thriller stand out from others, separating it from the norm. That said, I would still retain the classic thriller elements, such as suspense, enigma, plot twist, red herrings, cliff hangers and thrills.

The Demographic Audience I Will Target:

The British Class System

The demographic for my target audience will sit similarly to that of a conventional thriller. I believe my film would be received more enthusiastically by males as opposed to females, however I do recognise that many females enjoy stereotypically ‘male’ films, and vice versa. That said, I believe that due to the use of violence, darker themes, profanities and the ways in which both males and females are presented within my opening, a male audience may feel more satisfied by the opening and the manner in which it explores the codes and conventions of the genre. All of the protagonists and antagonists are male, with the exception of the single female being the fatality within the first scene. This may cause female viewers to feel underrepresented, and therefore they may not be gratified by the opening. Men however, see male characters in dominant positions, as my film will be shot from a predominantly male gaze, therefore meaning a male audience may find it much more thrilling. For reasons similar to that of any thriller (outlined above) my target audience would be 18-40. I have expanded the age range higher than that of an average thriller, as my opening will challenge the viewer due to the enigma created, and the more intellectual themes at play, such as the duality of man and a personality conflicted with good and evil, as well as intricate themes such as class and gender.

The Psychographic Audience I Will Target:

My audience’s psychographic is where my target audience begins to veer away from the stereotypical thriller target audience. Whilst my audience would seek thrills and wish to be intellectually challenged through the visceral elements of the thriller genre, I would also be exploring a much more niche audience due to my thriller being a crime and psychological hybrid, as well as a much broader audience due to the more entertaining elements of my opening, inspired by Tarantino. As my thriller is a crime-psychological-thriller, I would be directly aiming it at an audience partly interested in the human pneuma, and also the solving of crimes. That said, these would not be dominant aspects. Instead they would augment my thriller in a manner of subtlety, as opposed to controlling it. I have chosen to  accommodate these themes in this way so as they do not deter a larger audience who may been uninterested in this specific focus. I would also seek to engage a more film-literate audience to my thriller, through the manner in which I have elected to use and abuse the codes and conventions. 

A humours representation of the differences
between the classes

The main class types I would believe my film to be aimed at are A (higher middle-class) B (middle-class) and C1 (lower middle-class). This would partly be due to these classes being perhaps more educated and consequently more interested in the themes which are examined within the thriller genre. I believe explorers will make up part of my target audience. As they are mostly predominately students, they will most probably be from the middle-class. Explorers seek new things, such as current brands and perhaps a newly discovered spin on a developing genre. As a result of the nature of explorers, I believe they would be enticed by a new film from an unknown production company by an unknown director. As my film would be the first to be produced by my production company and the first that I had created, I believe it would appeal more to explorers than say, mainstreamers or resigned, who place their confidence in well-established brand names for satisfaction. Furthermore, explorers fit within the first half of my target audience's age, being 16-25 years old. A key point here is that despite my movie having an 18+ rating - due to the arguably controversial content - that does not mean all of my audience will be above the age of 18. I believe reformers will make up the largest portion of my target audience. Reformers can be said to have (are) normally attended(ing) higher education, and thus I believe they may be more interested in the themes my thriller presents, such as the duality of a man’s personality and the enigma created by the faceless killer. Reformers, in a manner similar to explorers, also select products for quality, and I would hope due to my research into the thriller genre and the careful construction of my opening they would be enticed by not only the quality of my product but the ways in which I have used and abused the codes and conventions of the thriller genre.