Target Audience Research

In order to see what people thought about thriller films and our film opening, we decided to create a questionnaire with ten questions that we asked to ten different people. We decided that our target audience would be young adults so those of around late teens to late twenties. As those were the people that tended to watch and enjoy thrillers more.

The results we got back showed that most people enjoyed cliffhangers at the end of films and openings, as it makes them more eager to watch the sequel or the rest of the film; this was good feedback for us as this is a technique we were planning on using. This will create suspense during our film opening as people will want to know what happens next.

Another good piece of feedback we got was that people preferred when little of the plot line is revealed during the opening, which is something we listened to; only giving small pieces of information to the audience when it's needed for them to understand. Including little of the plot line adds to the suspense as the audience are left in the dark and have little to no idea what will happen next. 

A lot of people said they preferred when film openings started at the end and worked their way up to present day; when planning our Apparition we tried to keep it quite vague. This way if we was to develop it further or make it into a full film, it could follow this idea starting from the end and finishing at the beginning. This could still create suspense as the audience would have seen the ending but not the events that led up to it happening. 

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) is a independent government organisation that has been classifying films in the UK since 1912. 

When thinking about our film opening, we had to think about classification and what we were aiming for and whether or not our content would be suitable for that particular rating. 

Most thriller films range between an 12 rating to an 18 rating, because many thrillers can range in the amount of blood, gore, violence, swearing, graphic and sexual scenes that they choose to include; all of these elements affect the rating of a film and can cause it to increase. 

I think Apparition would be a 15 rating, as whilst it most likely contain frequent strong language and violence; it wouldn't need to heavily rely on this which is something that films rated 18 do. Rated 18's might also contain sexual violence, graphic sex scenes and discriminatory language/behaviour, which most likely won't be needed in our film. 

By having a slightly lower film rating, it also means that we can attract viewers of a slightly younger age bracket and gain more revenue. If Apparition was an 18, then we'd lose audience members who are between the ages of sixteen and seventeen, who are part of the target audience.