section 4: audience research- and research into the BBFC film classification system

After writing out our questionnaire and distributing them around the college we can now draw up a number of conclusions. These conclusions will then have an important influence on some decisions we will make regarding our thriller film.

Most of the people who filled in our questionnaires were sixteen years old as you can see from the pie chart. The questionnaire proved that we needed to focus on the teenage market when making our thriller film and also re-ensured us that we had chosen the correct age certificate for our film. However, the questionnaire was not directed to any twelve or thirteen year olds because we didn’t feel that they would give the creative and helpful feedback as the older teenagers did. This caused us to gamble with the younger market but I think that the extremely positive feedback we got from the older market has made it acceptable.

When asked which subgenre of thrillers our audience prefer they all gave an extremely positive reaction to Psychological thrillers and so this inspired us to try and make our thriller film as psychological as we could. I think that this has been shown in our opening sequence in the method we have used to create suspense by having instrumentals in black video and then silence when picture is shown on the screen. This I feel gave the opening sequence some pace and plays with the audiences emotions in a psychological way. The second most popular subgenre was the supernatural thriller which was good because the general plot of our thriller film was supernatural and so it was good to know that our target audience responded well to this genre.

As you can see from the pie chart we asked our audience which genre of music would be best for creating suspense. We gave them a range of genres of music to choose from and the two most popular were orchestral and rock. So when creating the music we did want to please our audience but also make the music scary and make the audience feel confused and still abide by the thriller codes and conventions. So when adding music to our thriller film we will look out for songs that have an orchestral background but have a slight rock edge and give the opening more pace. The target audience did respond negatively to the fast paced music and so this would mean that the music we choose will have to be relatively slow but we will make sure that it still can create suspense.

When we asked our target audience which setting would be the best for a thriller film and we got another positive response. This is because we were planning on setting our film in just a normal household environment. This would then make the thriller seem more realistic as it is set in a normal, everyday environment like in paranormal activities. This would make more of an impression on our target audience because it's closer to real life and it would give the audience the feeling that it could happen to them. The second most preferred setting was the urban landscape and this also is another positive response as our secondary setting in our thriller film would have been the city with scenes involving the detective.

Our target audience were asked when they think that the twist should be revealed and we got a very strong response to the end of the film. This means explicitly that we shoulr reveal the twist at the end of the film, it also means that we will have to adopt a linear narrative. We will have to abide by the linear narrative structure because this involves the twist being revealed at the end of the film; however this is good because it is an easy and effective method of laying out the plot to our film. The linear narrative is also very affective because it has worked for such popular thriller films such as Red Eye, The Day After Tomorrow and Batman the Dark Knight.

We asked our target audience if children would be scary and effective in thriller films and the majority of our audience said that yes they would. This shows us that without question they agree with us, this is a very good reaction because we were planning on having a child in our thriller but we weren’t sure if it would benefit the film or not. However, the reaction from this question has reassured us that we should have a child in our thriller film.

We received another strong reaction from our audience when we asked which name they would prefer. The name Psychotica was the overall favourite and so it was easy for us to name our thriller film.