Recently, I have been doing some surveys by filming various age groups and asking them questions relating to the thriller genre and specifically about my thriller idea. There are three age categories: 15-20, 21-39 and 40+. All of these categories have a male and a female constituent. Here are the interviews:
Boy 15-20
Here, I interviewed Brandon, who fits in the 15-20 age category. His answers were fairly typical for someone his age, and this gives us evidence that this age group enjoys thrillers and would enjoy watching a spy/political thriller. It also tells us that this category are looking for suspense when watching a thriller but also a good storyline.
My second interview was with Jonny, who also fits into this age category. Stereotypically, his answers matched up pretty well with Brandon's, as they both talked about high-action thrillers as their favourite. This age category would like our film as it contains a lot of action and fast-paced sequences which is exampled by these two interviews.
15-20 Girls
This is Agata, who started off our research into the 15-20 girls category. Unusually for teenage girls, Agata preferred action movies and thrillers that contained suspense and 'on the edge of your seat' moments. This is an interesting observation as you would not think girls would like this type of film stereotypically. She also said she would like to see our film, giving us evidence that she enjoys these types of films.
Mimi was actually quite similar to Agata in the way that they would both enjoy our film. However, Mimi said that her favourite genre of film was comedy, which could be problematic as our thriller idea contains little to no comedy. A common theme running throughout all of the interviews so far is the want of suspense within a thriller movie, which is something we hope to achieve.
18-39 Men
Stereotypically age range, Tom said he liked thrillers and seemed to know what he was talking about film-wise. He is a media student and gave me a great insight into the average students' perspective on thrillers. Like many of the people we interviewed, Tom thought that our thriller sounded a bit too much like a James Bond film which is something we should have to tweak.
Paul fits into the 18-39 men category and is a media teacher at my college. Previously in this category, we have had a positive reaction to our thriller idea and this interview fits into that stereotype. Many people take the genre 'thriller' into many different styles, some thinking it is just horror, but some thinking it films like the Bourne series. In fact, all of these films fall into the thriller genre and Paul's answer matched the answers we were hoping for perfectly.
18-39 Women
Contrary to popular assumption, I found that women in this age category were highly interested in our action/spy/political thriller concept/idea, as exampled by Olivia in this video. She even stated that her favourite genre of film was action, breaking the stereotype of this age group and making her a member of our target audience.
I decided to interview Monika, who originally comes from Poland to see what this constituent would add to our survey. Also, surprisingly to me, she said she would watch our film, hinting to our research that our film may be a bit 'soft' to be a thriller, and maybe too similar to other franchises. However, she could be in our target audience as we are given the impression she would see our thriller film.
40+ Men
The first person I interviewed in this age category was Simon, a media teacher at my college. Firstly, I assumed that as Simon was of the older side of the spectrum, he would find our film too fast paced and edgy. However, it turned out he knew a lot about thrillers and films in general and showed an interest in our film. A constant piece of information I received was that our film is very similar, causing us to doubt our idea and look for improvements to the storyline. So far, our idea has generally had a positive reaction.
In this interview, I made sure that the strong point of selling my idea was the political side of our thriller, which I assumed a man of Bob's age would prefer to something like car chases and assassinations. This proved correct as Bob didn't actually want to stop talking about how interested he was in the project, making us think even more so that our thriller is as family-friendly as thrillers can get.
40+ Women
And here is my mum, I know you've been waiting for it! Stereotypically of the older woman, she prefers romantic comedies as her genre of film choice so I was not expecting the answer I received when she said yes to wanting to see our film. However, I feel she was under the impression that every film has a love story in it an we were not assuming our thriller had anything of the sort, therefore ruling her out of our target audience.
And last but not least, I interviewed my mums colleague, Maria. After having interviewed one 40+ women, I was under the impression that most answers would be the same for the same age group but was eventually proved wrong. Maria had multiple choices for her favourite thriller, however they were all in different categories of thriller making me think that she does not watch them very often and only likes a few.
Overall, after much research and surveying about our target audience, I have reached the conclusion of the male audience being our target, more specifically the younger men. This is because I received a clean sweep of similar answers from all of these men, convincing me that this was the right choice for our target audience. This was, of course, our guess from the beginning as we followed the stereotype. However, it did make us think about what genre of film we were making, and prompted us to rethink exactly what happens in the film to make it less family-friendly and a film that is worthy of certificate 15 in cinemas.
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