Secondary research:
I used secondary research in order to help me attract and address my target audience. The reason is because secondary research helped me to identify the conventions that are used in a thriller to appeal to the target audience. For instance, secondary research helped me to identify the convention of a female victim with the colour of the clothes that she is wearing to connote her vulnerability.
Further from my research, I found the target audience of thrillers are people aged between 15-40, unisex, employed people, students or unemployed people. Also, the target audience are all ethnicities, it is not specific to one race.
The thriller audience enjoys conventions that are in the thriller genre, mainly the types of characters, especially the male anatgonist who is used to intimidate other characters in the movie and to be the person that the audience fears. Another convention, that is liked by the audience is the Iconography used. The iconography in thrillers is usually blood, weapons and money and all these conventions appeal to the audience into seeing what happens next.
The emotion that the target audience feel towards the thriller genre are tension, fear, excitement and suspense. These emotions among the target audience mainly occur when the action is taking place. Overall, the audience will have enjoyment in unique characters and plots that are twisted.
From my research, I decided that the target audience for my product should be:
Age/s: 15-40
Gender: Unisex
Ethnicity: Diverse
Occupation: Mainly students/employed and unemployed people
Hobbies/Interests: Socialising, watching thrillers and horrors, going out and being thrilled in many ways.
Attracting my target audience:
I designed a questionnaire to receive the expectations of my target audience and what they wanted for my media thriller product. The questionnaire results helped me to realise the elements and conventions that I needed to include within my thriller. This was good because the results were specific, relevant to my ideas and the feedback was from people I wanted to appeal to.
Four questions asked in my questionnaire:
One key question I asked was "What thriller character appeals to you the most out of a female victim ,antagonist and a protagonist? Most answers I received were for the male antagonist. This meant that I needed to make the male antagonist the main focus in my thriller film, to make sure that I was addressing my target audiences needs and desires.
Also I asked a key question of "What gender victim do you prefer?" between a male or female. The majority of the answers were in favour of a female becoming the victim. This means that I need to have a female as the victim, in order to make it more appealing.
Positive: People in my target audience had enjoyed the thriller I made with my group here are the some of the positive comments I received:
"The thriller had carried out my expectations, in terms of making me excited but with fear at the same time. I found the characters very appealing in different ways".- Sean Mutiso 17 years old.
"The thriller lived up to the standards of the film genre, especially with the tension that was created"- Jordan 17 years old.
Negative: However, other people in my target audience had disappointing feedback to say about my thriller, here are some of the negative comments:
" In my opinion, the thriller was too typical and also it didn't create much tension as I had expected".- Samuel 18 years old.
"The narrative of the thriller was too complex for me, it was hard to follow the thriller, for it wasn't making sense".- Chloe 18 years old.
Focus groups:
These focus groups show the production and work of our thriller production in process.
