AS Media - Coursework Evaluation Question 4

1. Evaluation – Question 4: Who
would be the audience for your
media product? Include
audience feedback.

2. Target Audience
 We believe that our target audience would be in the 15-
25 year olds range, so we decided on a film certificate
of a 15+ because we believe that our opening has the
correct level of what this age rating allows film makers
to release. Also if we made this to be an 18 this would
limit the audience for our opening and if we were
releasing this to the general public this would limit the
number of people that would be able to see it thus
creating more of a niche market and therefore reducing
the profits that we would make.

4. Taken
from the
BBFC
website

5. Examples of different ages
ranges of thrillers

6. Conclusion
 From the examples on the slide previously the
majority of thrillers are at the age rating of a
15 with exception of some being an 18
instead. From this it gave us some indication
beforehand about what age rating we wanted
this to be before we actually came up with the
idea for our thriller.

7. Audience Research

8. Audience Research

9.  From our audience research (Survey Monkey) we
found that the majority of our audience that took
part in the survey were in the age range of 15-18 so
the decision to make the age certificate for our
thriller a 15 was a correct one, as we can see that
the majority of people that would be going to see
this film are within the target audience age range. I
believe that even based off our audience research,
it would still be wrong to set the age certificate of
our thriller to an 18 as it would create a more niche
market which would reduce our profit and target
audience if we were to release this for real in the
cinema or VOD (Video on Demand).

10.  Also from our audience research (Survey Monkey) we
found that the most popular genre of thriller that people
are most likely to watch or go to see is a psychological
thriller – as a result we decided on a narrative that would
have a more psychological feel to it and in the end we
were able to shoot a project that is more psychological in
nature in response to our audience research. We thought
that our thriller would not appeal to people over the age
of 27 as we believed that they would not be interested in
our concept as much as the younger audiences today.
Even though we debated how we could make it
appealing to older audiences we believe that these older
audiences would find out narrative too unrealistic and
slow, due to this older demographic being used to much
older thriller films such as ‘Psycho’ (Hitchcock, 1960).

11. Audience Profile – James O’Rourke 6124
53 years old
Full Time Employment
Shops in:
- Next
- Superdry
- ASOS
I tend to watch any film if I’m watching it
with other people so I can share my
thoughts about the film with others
afterwards .
Favourite films:
- Terminator 2: Judgement
Day
- Seven Samurai
- Stalag 17
- The Great Escape
- Psycho
- Where’s that fire
What was the last thriller you
have watched?:
Psycho
Gender: Male
Favourite Genre in
general?
Action/Adventure
What is the most important aspect in a
thriller?
I would have to say the narrative is
definitely important for me as sometimes
you wouldn’t expect the ending which
makes the film more enjoyable.
Favourite genres of music
- Jazz
- (In Some cases) Hip Hop
- Pop
- Some Rock (particularly ACDC)

12. Audience Profile
 For this audience profile I interviewed a
person that was out of our preferred target
audience – but from the majority of the other
audience profiles within my group my
colleagues interviewed other people of the
same age range and from those three found
that they had seen more recent thrillers.

13. Thriller Conventions/Elements
 A reason why characters do what they do: searching for top
secret information or trying to cover up a past crime.
 Twists and turns- devices used to keep the audience guessing
 Red herrings – pieces of information which deliberately mislead
the audience and possibly some of the film’s characters.
 Big locations – Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, Mount Rushmore, etc
 Hero and Villain, though the villain might be hard to spot.
 Cliffhangers throughout the film.
 A trick ending - the ending of The Unusual Suspects
 It must be thrilling for the audience.
 Have a great final sequence.
 There must be clues throughout the film pointing to the ending
and the identity of the villain, victim and hero.
 Tension is key to this genre.

14. Thriller Conventions within our
product
 We tried to keep the audience interested in our thriller through he use of different thriller
conventions.
 For example we placed quite a bit red herring within the opening of our thriller that
involves the father and daughter – we suspect early on in the film from the opening that
because the father is an alcoholic is is likely the one that started the fire, but as the film
progresses we find out it was the daughter that starts the fire of their home resulting in
death – this is hinted at with the scene of the female protagonist in the bathroom burning
the photograph of her and her parents.
 Another example is we use symbolism of a beer bottle at the start of the opening within
the panning shot of the hallway to suggest that there is an element of alcoholism – later
this is shown within the scene by the dad with the whisky bottle and pouring it in the
kitchen shot.
 We also try to portray a psychotic individual through the female protagonist - we portray
her nature through her deep interest into fire (especially through the use of the matches
that we used) and how she burned a family photo of her and her parents.
 For our location we sort of went off tangent slightly – instead of having it set in a big
location we decided to set our narrative in a confined space to make the audience
experience a feeling of being uncomfortable during the opening and to help increase the
tension.
 We also tried to incorporate the conventions of a thriller within our audience research,
such as by asking questions like ‘In the opening of a thriller, how much of the plot should
be revealed?’ The results are shown on the next slide:

15. From this question for
our audience
research we found
that the majority of
people replied saying
that as little as
possible should be
revealed in the
opening of a thriller –
as a result we
revealed the least
amount of the
narrative within our
opening as possible.
For example by not
showing the father’s
face.

16. Sean Harnett (Age: 18)
 What do you like/dislike about our thriller opening?
 “I liked the different camera shots especially the
shot of the father at the kitchen table and the shot
of the camera tilting and zooming onto the burning
photograph. I think maybe you could of added
some more jumpy sound effects to get more
people on the edge of their seats”

17. Catherine O’Rourke (Age: 22)
 What do you think of the added soundtrack and sound
effects that were added to the final product and what
kind of effect does it create for you?
 “I think the sound effects and the soundtrack go really
well with the different scenes within your opening, for
me, I think that this creates tension and an
uncomfortable atmosphere especially with the scene of
the female protagonist flicking through the family photo
album and the sound of children playing quietly in the
background helps to heighten the atmosphere.”

18. What does this show?
 We found that over all the majority of our
target audience enjoyed our opening and
found that the different aspects that we have
included within our opening have helps to
convey the conventions of a thriller.

19. Below is a video in which we had
other people view our first cut of
our opening and gave feedback
on it: