This document discusses the target audience for a psychological thriller film project. Research was conducted on similar films like Black Swan and Shutter Island to identify common audience demographics. The research found that psychological thrillers tend to attract primarily younger audiences aged 15-24, especially young males. Specifically, 46% of Black Swan viewers were aged 15-24, and Shutter Island received over 150,000 male ratings from viewers aged 18-29 on IMDB. Considering this research and the mildly graphic content of their own psychological thriller, the authors decided to target their film at an audience 15 years and older.

1. Who would be the audience
for your media product?

2. Our media product is a psychological thriller that
has scenes with a suggestive violent nature.
When we asked people for their thoughts on
what kind of sub-genre of thriller they enjoyed the
most popular choice surprisingly turned out being
the physiological sub-genre. Although the the
gender was mixed with a 50% male and an equal
female ratio, so through the questionnaire we
couldn’t get absolute clarity on what each genre
enjoyed most. For the age group we also couldn’t
find out what most age groups enjoyed as all but
two were from 16 to 18 years old. Although in our
secondary research we found a significant
amount more, we found that if we rated the film a
15 (due to the suggestive violence and scenes of
excessive blood) we would engage a an
audience of young males, that’s if we were to
release it to a market. Using the BFI ‘statistical
yearbook’ we found that around 30-40% of the
cinema audience is 15-24 which varies from year
to year depending on what type of films are
released. In 2006 the ‘Da Vinci Code’ released
and along with several other fantasy and
adventure films, it increased the audience level to
around 40%. Using the information we collated
we also found that 46% of all viewers of the
psychological thriller/horror film ‘black swan’ were
15 to 24.

3. We have mentioned the psychological thriller
‘Shutter Island’ several times as an influence to our
project, so it was fitting to include viewer
demographics for the title. Using IMDB we found
that a majority of reviews for the film were
conducted by males aged 18-29 with 150,000+
ratings coming from male users of the site; Female
users made up only 30,000+ of the total 18-29 year
old figure, which has a total of around 195,000.
Although these demographics may not be 100%
correct due to the high number of male users on the
site, they defiantly paint a picture of the common
viewers to enjoy the film.
The table to the right is ratings demographics
for the physiological thriller as mentioned in
the previous slide ‘Black Swan’ as you can
see the top age demographic is 18-29, as said
before the site has a popular male audience
so it isn’t surprising that the male ratings are
high in numbers even though the film has a
theme on ballet, which is a popular female
following. The second highest age group is
30-44 which still has a high male figure, which
could indicate that the film has a balanced
audience and wasn’t male or female heavy in
viewership.

4. Relating to our own media project we chose a 15 rating which felt right and fit well
with the intended audience age which was around 15 years to anything over. Due to
the mild graphic content this age restriction would almost have to be put in anyway,
although the sequence could probably get away for being a 12 or 12a; but the
intended audience is still 15 years plus, because of the majority of philological
thrillers we could find had a that age group at the top of the list.