Evaluation

Within this evaluation I will be portraying my findings from my research into target audience. The purpose of a target audience in a thriller is to know the boundaries of what can be included, without causing psychologically disturbance within the audience. When targeting a specific age one has to consider abiding by certain legal rules. For example for adults 18 and above real life situations are allowed to be included: swearing, explicit scenes, violence and so on. Where as for a target audience of young children, none of the above is to be included; only unrealistic and happy scenes. Target audience can also help us to develop certain features that that age group expect to see and want, in order to keep them on the edge of their seats as a result of the suspense built.

As a group we carried out a wide range of primary research, therefore having information that is valid and recent, giving us a good understanding of what our audience would like to see in a thriller. We conducted a 10 question questionnaire giving a range of multiple choice answers of which they could choose from, this enabled us to analyse and record our findings in a simple and straight forward format. As a result of doing this questionnaire we were able to find out appropriate information specifically on thrillers.

Within my group we chose to question 40 people, as we felt it was an appropriate number, in order to enable us to get a good variety of opinions through randomly aged individuals, that then came under certain age categories. Due to our group having 4 members, we equally split and were responsible of conducting and interviewing 10 people. We then combined all of our findings, then created pie charts to portray the information clearly, helping us to analyse the statistics and being aware of the demand for the individual elements of a thriller, that want to be shown by certain age groups.

We carried out a series of vox pops to further our primary research. I feel they were very successful due to being easily accessible information that didn't take up too much time. It will assist when planning our thriller, as I know what features different age groups what to see when watching in order to enjoy, therefore their feedback to friends and family are positive and attracts more viewers.

What do you expect to see in thriller films?
Weaponry   Flashbacks  Gore  Death  Other

The question above was taken out from the questionnaire that we carried out, and the graph below shows our results. Our findings show that the biggest percentage consisted of the answer 'Death' and use of iconography of 'Weaponry'. These two seemed to be the most popular, with flashbacks and gore. Within our thriller it will consist of death but minus the gore. Weaponry is not focused on, but we are still planning to include good iconography which could be seen as a good source, but not used in that context. To compensate, we emphasis on portraying a characters flashback.

What characters do you like to watch in a thriller film?
One main character   Group of people   Young girl/boy   Vulnerable woman

This question above was also taken from our groups questionnaire, and results are shown in the form of a pie chart below. Feedback shows that over 20 interviewees choose to watch thrillers which involve a vulnerable woman to play the role of victim. As a group we took this result on board and responded; choosing to feature a vulnerable female, although of a very young age. We collaborated both of the top choices as we felt it was well suited to our thriller.

What colour of clothing do you expect the victim and villain to be wearing?
Black/ grey and white   Blue and pink   Orange and green   Purple and black

Again this question was taken from our questionnaire, and the results are displayed below. The findings from this question were incredible, as we can see a  vast amount of our interviewees can distinguish the difference of clothing worn by a victim and villain; villain wearing black/grey to portray dominance and authority, and the victim wearing white to show innocence. For our group it is important knowing that they have this ability of understanding which characters playing which role, which enable us to use the typical colours with our characters and not have to worry that they will in any way struggle with differentiation.    

As a result of carrying out the two forms of primary information, we were able to as a group find out exactly what our interviewees like to see within a thriller, so that our audience enjoy our two minute thriller that we will soon be making. Having these results enables us to take into consideration and analyse the findings and include any features that we may have missed out, or emphasis on the ones we have that came back as a particularly popular answer, this is all part of fulfilling the audience expectations.