Audience Research and Analysis

Our audience's age would be core, 15-24- so it ranges from teenagers to young adults. From our survey we have concluded that Psychological thriller as genre is neither male or female orientated, this is due to that fact that pretty much all films in the genre have a central character that the world seems to distortedly revolve around. Although our age seems to stop at 24, we believe our genre would also reach an older niche audience of educated 24- 32 year olds, past those ages there is a decline of 32+ people going to the cinema. This niche audience is because in Psychological thrillers, you have be slightly more intellectually gifted to grasp some of the ideas and concept as they tend to be rather philosophical.


We would want our film certification for a 15, the violence included would not be too strong but more towards the torture element. Our horror element would also add this due to our choice of genre - this would not to be constant but would be shown quite a lot in our final scene. The language would also be of a 15 certification, strong but not using words that would raise it to an 18. The 15 certification attracts the core audience because of the certification, we don't believe that it would be an 18 as our content would not be explicit enough. We aim to have our trailer certified as 12a, so it can be shown on TV from 7.30 in the evening onwards and can be shown in most cinema screenings.

Our audience would be a cognitive one- they have a desire learn and think through problems. This explores other sub genres within our film such existentialism, where you are made to this about the deeper things in life, this again links to hyper reality. Hyper reality is prominent topic and technique applied to our genre this is shown in films such as 'The matrix' and 'Shutter Island'. Our audience would not be entirely cognitive though our audience also are slightly affective- they want to explore emotion and sympathize. This is not completely true of all Psychological thrillers but has been used to create effect in many films, but has been in 'Donnie darko'- a film which influences us greatly.

Psychological thrillers are globally incredibly popular, 'Shutter Island' was the top of European and Asian DVD and Blu Ray sales- this shows the global influence of the chosen genre. Our film would have to have appropriate and interesting themes to catch this global cognitive audience. From our survey the themes people like to see are:

. Horror Element

. Warped Perception

. Confusion

. Central Character

. Intensity

. Darkness

. Twisted Behavior

. Believable Dialogue

For a successful film we need to listen to what our audience want and say- we should look into these theme and how in incorporate them into our trailer. In one of our interviews some said in question to 'what catches your attention in trailers', they answer ' I am most interested by the overall locations and action that happens in the film, this because I can get an idea of the vibe of the film'- this tells us the audience like to see a range in trailers, so they can distinguish what they will get from seeing the film.

60 % of people we surveyed said they actively made an effort to watch trailers, this tells us trailers are vital to the success of films, in our trailer we have to make sure we include all aspects of a Psychological thriller- to promote our film. Web 2.0 has proved ever dominant as 91% of people watched their trailers on youtube, so releasing a trailer on the internet proves to be the most popular way of watching a trailer.

We asked 'What trailer of the past year has caught your attention the most and why?'The most answered trailer was Harry Potter Deathly Hallows and the reasons were

. ' Because it was constantly shown on the internet and put in my face'

. ' Exciting and fast paced'

. 'The CGI was amazing'

This gives us an outline to what our audience enjoy from trailers. Many people answer Black Swan and talked about it being, 'weird' and 'very twisted' these are themes we need to have and promote in our trailers. 46% of people in our survey said they were very likely to see Phycological thrillers and 38.5% of people said maybe- this shows we have a popular genre and we have to create something unique and innovative to attract our active audience.

'Inception' was the most heard about film with 79% saying so. This shows that Physiological thriller can dominate the mainstream film audience and with an interesting and unique concept our film can succeed. Doing the surveys were incredibly useful and an effective way of finding more about our audience.