Thomas Hope conducted research to determine the target audience for a thriller film project. He decided to focus on a young female audience after debates. Through questionnaires and interviews, he gathered feedback that helped narrow the audience and determine what themes and elements the audience preferred, such as a female lead and themes of torture. For his film, Hope aimed to make the protagonist relatable to the target audience and included conventions of the thriller genre. He also used sound and cinematography, such as diegetic sounds and music, to build tension without dialogue. Additionally, Hope planned to promote the film online to engage the target audience.

1. By Thomas Hope
Evaluation :

2. Who is your audience?
• After some tense debating in the begging over whether we wanted to
produce a thriller or a independent opening sequence, we eventually
decided on thriller. We next realised that now we had the genre we
needed to decide what audience we based it for. Target audiences
have lots of different needs and requirements, a male audience prefer
more action and older audience like more dialogue to help them
follow but for us we decided after a long debate that we wanted to go
with a young female audience that we could produce a really good
film for that they would hopefully enjoy. We now had a genre and an
audience we were ready to embark on a long journey to reach the
perfect end product…..

3. • However I quickly discovered that there are
some types of people you need to cater for
and they have some many different likes and
dislike trying to make one for a more broad
audience like I had planned was going to be
super hard so we needed to narrow it down a
little bit and find put more about what
people where looking for.
• What I need was to do a more focused
audience and get feed back on what the
liked, I couldn’t make a film that addressed
more that three ‘tribes’ as the same time
after I looked at uk tribes and saw all the
different kinds of people and the categorises
the fall into.
Discovering more…..

4. Questionnaire time…
• With the help of some of a my a level psychology
friends to make a questionnaire and tailor it to get the
answers I we needed to see and the to make sure they
fully understood the questions.
• I addressed it suit younger people under but people
from all age groups took the survey, I still addressed to
all genders as I felt the film still good be enjoyed by
males despite the female focus, we found these
results.
• We found that………
• Females were more interested in our premise
• The majority of people (of either gender) would prefer a female lead
• Appealing to large groups or young couples would benefit
• Popular themes among our demographic for thrillers include torture and masks
• Most would want it to be realistic

5. More depth was needed…
• I decided I wanted to take
my research into more
depth and decided to
interview a close friend
called Megan Oliva Thacory-
Howard to get an avid
movie buff and a fan of
thrillers I wanted to get
more of an idea of what I
needed to do and what she
thought was a good idea.

6. Conclusion to Question 4
• From all the research I have learnt many useful things. I now understand
that I wanted to focus on a smaller audience for females than aim to
address everyone. I need to still incorporate the thriller conventions into
addressing my audience. When making a film for a particular audience I
need to fully understand what the want in the film and what they are
expecting. I also need to know the interests so I can tailor the film so they
will like it ie. Make the characters in the film more similar to a certain tribe
or more associated with there likes.
• I also need to take into account feed back of people. They are the audience
after all. You need to take all the feed back and incorporate the best
possible thing with a mix of your creative ideas an the likes and dislike of
your audience to make the perfect production. Its also key to remember
that your making it for a publisher and that your making the film to sell so
you need to get as many people through the gates as possible .

7. How did you address the audience?
• Now that we had finally finished planning need to decide on ways of
which to make the piece relevant to our audience and make the piece
something they can associate with and enjoy. They need to be able to
find it realistic and scary whilst also seeing some aspect of relatability
as if this is a real life situation that could happen to them .
• To do this I needed to find ways to make the piece relevant by adding
in certain aspects to help the audience member affiliate themselves
and get behind our production and make them want to know more
and find out more about he characters and world we had created.

8. Thriller research and conventions for context
• Codes and conventions of the thriller genre
• 1. What is a thriller?
• A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist character and the antagonist, when there is a disruption in
the equilibrium. Then the story shows a chain of bad events building tension and suspense for the climax. The aim of the
protagonist is to restore justice, while the antagonist seeks to destroy it.
• 2. Conventions of a Thriller
• • Low key lighting • Quick cuts • Shadows • Tension music • Diegetic sound of breathing • Black and white shots •
Montage of shots • Protagonist is in the mercy of the Antagonist
• 3. Characters
• • The protagonist is often a brave male who seeks to restore the equilibrium • The antagonist will have a hidden identity
that the audience will uncover as the film progresses. Often the antagonist goes out for revenge from a past event.
• 4. Themes of Thriller
• • The storyline will be designed so the audience will think that it can happen to them, which will make them feel scared.
• 5. Cinematography of a thriller
• • There will be a lot of close ups and extreme close ups of the protagonist character, this is often to show their
emotions. Also it can be used to focus on props to aid the narrative. • The shots of the antagonistic character will be
cut quickly and will aim to hide their identity, e.g. A shot of the back of them, a low key shot, the silhouette, or shadow
of the character
• 6. Editing of a Thriller
• The director will include lots of jump cuts because there will be things happening that the audience is unaware of but is
essential for the film to make sense. Cross cutting is a key point in editing as it is used to build suspense which is
essential for a thriller. Continuous editing is used to help the audience understand the film better.
• 7. Sound in a Thriller
• • Music is essential in any film to understand the mood of the characters and hint at a significant part in the film. In a
thriller it adds suspense and tension. It will often start at a slow paves and the then build up to make the shots more
dramatic for the audience.
• 8. Mise en scene
• • The location is important for the film because it help the audience establish the theme. • Lighting is often low key •
Costumes- antagonist will be in dark clothes if you see them. Protagonist will be in ordinary everyday clothes •
Composition • Make up and hair styles • Acting • Filmstoke (Black & White, or colour, Fine-grain or grainy
• These conventions are things that I still need to include and
not ignore when adding to make the audience more relevant.
For example when I make the antagonist I will make he scary
and stick the genre conventions but I will make special care
to take notice of what the people I am appealing to hate the
most for example. The ‘rah’ one of our target audience
categories hate the colour black, I made sure out antagonist
wore all black so they could understand better the feat that
he installs into his victim hearts. Little things like that can
really add to the final production and make it that little bit
more effective and can give amore impressive over all result
as well as attract more people to come and see it .

9. Protagonist
• I wanted to make the protagonist a relatable character.
• Our main character was the strongest way in which we
addressed our audience, we auditioned for a beautiful
young teen female, that others could model themselves on
and aim to be like she’s strong willed and relatable.
• The actor we brought on to play the protagonist was under
20 years old, her actions of trawling through a police case
file and her costume convey a level of maturity that doesn’t
alienate audience members beyond the actor’s age. Also,
while the brief we chose allowed us to cater primarily to a
female audience, the brave and boisterous nature of her
character seen in parts of our opening (e.g., when she
throws the file on the floor in frustration) allows a
secondary male audience to enjoy and relate to her as well.
• We aimed to make her a very relatable character, she’s
relatable, she’s young she’s attractive and she’s clever and
want to pursue whatever dream she’s chasing she’s the
prefect idol for any young girl to have. Also there’s that air
of mystery and level of suspense as she’s a dark haired
rouge fiery and willing to stand up for herself whist also
being pretty and loveable all at the same time. She’s the
perfect lead role as she’s so malleable and easy to put into
every situation which is what makes her so relatable, and
marketable.

10. Sound and Cinematography
• Throughout our research, we received vague hints on how our
target audience are thrown into suspense. We knew it would take
more than just jump-scares or loud music to achieve this, so we did
the following:
• Introduced a non-mainstream song with an eerie tone to
compliment the film's own unsettling nature, appealing to a more
indie crowd, I searched on Spotify and other sites for hours and
hours honestly, over all I listened to around 5’000 songs to find the
perfect one that I could use to fit my piece, I then had to cut it and
change the pitch so I could fit perfectly with my ideology and image
of the final product .
• Only used diegetic sound (digging) at the beginning to introduce a
sharp, slow-building tension. I wanted it so that we had not talking
in out piece I like this idea of show not tell, I didn’t want to have any
speaking to distract and detract from my production. I wanted there
to be visual aids like the folder I made, I wanted other helpful things
like the polaroid photos I made, but other than that I wanted just
the music and the film.

11. But not just in production…
I figured that in this day and age where teens and
young adults spend all the time on the internet
and using social media the best way to reach out
to our target audience and make them feel
affiliated with out production was the use the one
thing they use most. I made a promo video to go
with an online marketing campaign as this is the
best way to reach our target audience and make
them feel involved and get them to come see our
production. This not only gives them a way to see
and share our product but also is a free way to
market the film as well as make the production
look savvy as we are online and open to be viewed
by everyone not just our target audience
expanding out market base.
Promo: