Who would be the audience for your media product?

We sent out a questionnaire with questions related to thriller openings and what people would expect from one. The questions range from age, gender, the importance of a thriller and preferred location for a thriller.

From our research we got some good feedback of what our target market wanted from a thriller opening. We took this feedback into consideration as it’s what our audience want and it determined the main features, conventions used, for example, flashbacks and the location used. We were going to start our opening with ’24 hours later’ but our research showed that flashbacks were more popular so we went with what our target market wanted and expected from a thriller.

When it came to rating our thriller we looked on the BBFC website to determine what was suitable to be put in our thriller. This all resulted in looking at other thrillers to see what rating they used for the different conventions they used.

We decided to rate our thriller for 15 years or over as our film was more suited for this area from all the different conventions etc used. 15 years and over classification states;

No one younger than 15 may see a '15' film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a '15' rated video work.

·         Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse

·         Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic

·         Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied.

·         Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail

·         There may be frequent use of strong language

·         Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury

This would be our typical audience for our thriller. Teenagers 15+ to fit in with our classification off all genders who have an interest in different genres of films; including thrillers. They wouldn't have to come from a certain background, just people who like watching films.

Our opening didn’t really contain any of this but by giving our film this classification makes people aware of the freedom of the rest of the film. From our results it showed that most people watch 15 and over classified films whereas a large amount of people watch18’s. This classification will show that our thriller will be viewed by a variety of people ranging from 15-18.