Evaluation

Evaluation

The research which we conducted was focused around identifying our target audience, and looking at the conventional ideas within a thriller which were most important to them.

It is important to identify your target audience when undertaking a project like this as it isn't the type of film which would appeal to everyone. 

From my knowledge of other successful thriller films, I know that they are usually given a certification of either 15, or 18. This therefore means that there is a specific audience for these types of film, and in order to create my own ideas which would appeal to the same audience, primary research was carried out to identify them. 

If we were to create a film which wasn't directed at a specific audience, there is a possibility that no one would find the film interesting enough to watch, therefore causing the film to be a failure. By clearly identifying the audience to aim the film at, you are guaranteed to have people who would be interested in watching the film. 

In order to find the target audience our group carried out two types of research; questionnaires and face to face interviews which were recorded. 

These two different types of research were carefully tailored so that the questions quickly and clearly identified to us who our target demographic is, and what key conventional ideas they would prefer to see in a thriller film. 

The two different types of research were chosen for different reasons. The questionnaires could be handed out to 40 people easily, and were quick to complete. This data was then easy to analyse a the questions had multiple choice answers, so we were able to put the responses into bar charts and pie charts. From this data we were able to form early ideas of what sort of thing we should feature in our thrillers. 

We chose to survey 40 people, as we believed that it would provide us with a range of opinions and ideas about what people would like to see, therefore when we formed our final ideas, they would include features which appealed to as many people as possible. 

The interviews were conducted to enable us to consolidate the information we had found from the questionnaires, and form definite ideas about the nature of our narrative. We were also able to ask people to take part who were more fitting with out identified target audience in order to provide the most accurate information possible. 

These interviews were very successful as the responses given were clear and concise, although it may have helped to interview more than 5 people to provide us with more detailed information.

An example of a question that was asked in our survey is 'how old are you?'. The response to this question, combined with the participant's further response to the question 'do you like watching thriller films?' showed us who our target audience was, as we could easily identify their age and gender (with the question 'which gender are you?'. 

A question from our interviews 'which conventions of a thriller are most important to you?' provided us with an idea of what things were most important to include in our narrative, i.e. we found that a vulnerable female victim was essential to the idea. 

We carefully considered which questions we were going to ask in each piece of research in order to find out the information which we required to design our narrative. This also meant that we didn't need to re consider any of our questions, or re collect any data.