Potential Audience Research

With our film being a psychological thriller, I conducted research into the audiences thrillers and films containing themes of mental illness, which contain similar amounts of violence and similar themes to our film.

The target audience for our film is both males and females between the ages of 15 and 25. I think this because firstly, the violence in our film automatically makes our film a 15. Even though our film contains a lot of violence which will appeal to men more, I think that our film is not gender bias because although the lead character is male, there are more female characters than there are male characters which I believe will make our film appeal to both men and women.  There is also the fact that the film contains a romantic relationship which will appeal to women more than men, so overall the film is appealing to both genders

Films I looked at as comparison to ours in terms of audience stats are Shutter Island and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. I chose Shutter Island for its similar genre, and one Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest for its similar theme of mental illness and setting in a mental asylum. I looked at the audience stats on IMdb and these were my findings. Shutter Island is on the left and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is on the right.



Shutter Island                                                                                     One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

As you can see, these films have a predominantly male target audience which leads me to believe that our film may be unconventional because it targets both males and females. Another unconventional feature of our film's target audience is that they are much younger than the audience of the two films I researched. I think this is because our actors are teenagers and not middle aged like the characters in the films I researched. This will strike chords with the younger generation and possibly make older people avoid our film which is why set our audience's age range range at 15 - 25.