Question Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?

My group and I did some research, when creating our thriller opening sequence, and we found that 15-24 year olds in 2014 made up the largest proportion of the UK cinema audience. From this information we decided to target our thriller for young adults, therefore we decided to rate our opening sequence 15. When researching we found that the bbfc stated that 15 rated films, videos and downloads can contain strong material including strong swearing, strong horror and strong violence. We felt that this linked to our thriller due to the fact that we have mild violence with the fake blood and the fake knife we used at the end of the title sequence.

Furthermore we did research into more thriller films to make sure we had the correct age rating for ours. When looking at different thriller movies we noticed a consistent pattern of them including suspense, mystery and horror. Some of these that we researched were the Blair Witch. This is classed as a horror-thriller on IMDb and was rated a 15. We also discovered that Girl on a Train was also rated a 15. However, this film was classed as a drama, mystery thriller. From doing this research it clarified to us that the age rating we had chose was suitable for our thriller opening sequence.

When planning our thriller we kept into consideration the male and the female viewers as we wanted to target both female and males. Therefore, throughout the thriller we needed areas that would catch the audience’s attention. Overall, women like to solve things out and due to this we used the theme of mystery to satisfy their needs. The mystery element comes from the audience not knowing who has taken the protagonist in Hostage. However, we didn’t fall into the stereotypical thriller using a female victim. This was so because we wanted to contradict the stereotype of women always being the damsel’s in distress.

Through doing this we felt that men would be more interested in our thriller as they could relate to the protagonist due to his clothing.

For our audience to enjoy our opening sequence we wanted to show parts of thriller films that they will identify with and then areas which we challenged. This was to give a different take on the Thriller conventions and how you can change them to still get a good effect. Most importantly it will help the audience think due to the mystery and to keep them interested. This is why we chose to place our age rating at 15 as we feel we needed an audience that would be mature and not easily distracted.