Planning: Initial Ideas

After Carrying out audience research I have decided on a few storyline premises to go on for the film.

1. A journalist uncovers a link between a series of stories which is leading to a further crime which only they can stop.
2. A Police Officer finds a link between a series of unsolved cases and tries to stop further attacks.
3. Man in an accident tries to figure out what happened, while avoiding a mystery gang. Events preluding the accident would be told in flashbacks.
4. A member of a secret organisation tries to overthrow their corrupt leaders after being framed for killing their fellow men.

Of these 3 of the 4 are involving a conspiracy of some kind, while the fourth (idea number 3) looks more into the mind, in a Memento style. Idea's 1, 2 and 4 could be mixed, for instance it could be a Journalist who finds the link between the unsolved cases, which leads of the secret organisation. These fit in with the findings from all aspects of my audience research, as Conspiracy Thrillers are one of the more popular sub-genre's, and often feature protagonists/characters with a hidden past (one of the things from my audience research), and would focus on the narrative. There may be hints of action, but little to no Special Effects, as this is what my audience expect from Thriller films.

Survey Results

Part of the research stage is doing audience research, meaning that you can create something they want. To do this I created a questionnaire which asked:

Do you watch films often?
Favourite genres?
Last Thriller Seen?
Favourite Thrillers?
What should be in a thriller?
Most important aspect of a film?
Protagonist associated with Thrillers?

The people I asked were part of the Audience Profile (see earlier post) and so were male (and female) between the age of 16 and 25.

The results of this went with the research I had done earlier, with everyone I asked saying they watched at least 3 films a week, and that the 3 most watched genres are Thriller, Comedy and Action. The last thriller watched varied but was either ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ (recently released in the cinema), ‘Inception’ (one of the highest rated thrillers of the last few years) and some of the older surveyed stated the last thriller they had seen was ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ (also recently released in cinemas). Inception and the Chris Nolan Batman films were some of the most popular thrillers, along with Sherlock Holmes: aGoS and some more action orientated thrillers like Law Abiding Citizen, V For Vendetta and The Departed.

Those surveyed all felt that the main parts of a thriller are twists, suspense and thrills. They also feel that story and character are the most important aspects of a film, which is what a trailer needs to communicate successfully. The characters in a thriller could be a number of things, but lots of people felt that there needs to be a conspiracy, and that the hero should be a professional, a soldier or police officer etc. The characters also need to be mysterious and to a point relate-able.


From this I know what type of story I could do for my target audience, and what elements to include for it to be seen by my target audience. 

Audience Profile

After doing some research into audiences for Thriller films, I have come up with an audience profile. This was done after looking at the BBFC guidelines, and ratings of similar films on websites like IMDb. 

The majority of thrillers do not go into graphic detail in any violent scenes or themes, and so are unlikely to be rated higher than a 15 by the BBFC. As well as this, mainly popular thrillers are rated at 12. By being 12 rated a film:

Must not be endorse discrimination
Can have infrequent drug use, which must not endorse the drug
Can have moderate physical and psychological threat may be permitted, provided disturbing sequences are not frequent or sustained.
Strong language must be infrequent.
Mature themes must be suitable for young teenagers
Violence cannot dwell on details.

Full details on the BBFC guidelines for 12/12A films can be found here
Meanwhile, 15 films will be more lenient (language, theme, horror) if given in context and deemed 'acceptable' for 15 year olds.
The full BBFC guidelines for 15 films can be found here

From the trailer alone it is often difficult to judge the tone, as scenes are edited to be suitable for more audiences.

A typical audience for a thriller does depend on the age of the film, but the 12/15 ratings often get the highest views, possibly because the teenage/ young adult market spends the most time at the cinema.

Some genre's are simple to create an audience profile when it comes to gender. For instance, men are more likely to watch action films, while women tend to prefer rom-com's. Some genre's like Drama and Thriller can appeal to both sexes, especially modern examples. Take Salt, for instance. Men would watch for the action and because it starred Angelina Jolie, while women would watch because the main character is female, and so it appeals to the 'feminist' viewpoint.

While my main character is also female, I feel that the story would also appeal to males, therefore my typical audience member would be a male aged between 16 and 25 or a female in the same age range. They would see a film for the story and character rather than the actor's and don't mind if the film they see is a major blockbuster or not. This is not far off what I had originally said when beginning to research Target Audience