Evaluation Activity 4 (Gavin Fernandes)

Evaluation Activity 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For our target audience of our thriller opening, as a group we collectively decided that the audience we would be targeting would be at the age of 15-25 year olds who would be mainly males however females too. Therefore we decided to have a film certificate of 15+. The age rating for our film is a 15 meaning that anyone aged 15 and over will be able to watch this film.

We decided that the age certificate should be 15 because from my audience research (questionnaire) that I conducted from my planning for our opening, I found that most peoples favourite sub-genre was action and crime and the majority of participants were aged 16-20. In addition to make our thriller more realistic and intriguing for the audience we for example used blood to convey many thriller conventions we knew that would not be appropriate for a younger audience to see.

Audience research (questionnaire)

In my audience research (questionnaire) I found that many females took my part and therefore we reconstructed from our initial idea of aiming directly for males to targeting both genders to engage in our thriller opening.

I think that it may not be appropriate for an older generation (as you can see in my questionnaire) older people do not tend to go for thriller films. This is probably due to the conventions that are seen in the film such as:

• Disturbing events and situations
• Fast paced actions at times
• Scenes that make the audience 'Jump'
• Loud music that adds tension

Furthermore some reasons why we chose age certificate 15 and not younger:

•  'Jumping' scenes may not be appropriate for young viewers.
• Disturbing events
• Plot line is aimed for an older audience 
• Detail of blood on hammer could disturb younger audience.

Similar Thriller filmFrom these two similar films, some other key thriller conventions we knew we needed to make sure we include within our thriller to attract our audiences is (ELEMENTS TO INCLUDE):

An existing film that is similar to ours is the Purge which in comparison has the same film rating as our Thriller opening (15). The Purge involves suspense (like ours), and unsettling disturbing scenes (like ours). Both films are very likely to draw the same type of audience due to the fact that there are lots of similarities. fff

 

Some key thriller conventions we knew we needed to make sure we included in our thriller opening to attract our audience were:

• A good story (an intriguing plot to endure the audience in to watching the film)
• An action-packed opening chapter (the introduction of a good thriller always sets the pace for the rest of the film)
• Keep the audience questioning to what is happening and what is going to happen
• Attractive, visuals are clear and look intriguing to audience
• Intriguing sound effects (Non-diegetic sound to build up the suspense)
• Keep the audience on the edge of their seats and thinking throughout the opening.

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Examples of our target audience

Here are examples of what my target audience may be like and shows the characteristics they possess and convey.

Audience research profile from ferng027313