Audience and Thriller

In General:

Media institutions categorize audiences to help them create relevant media products that would be suitable for a specific age.
However some categories may have problems when targeting audiences. An example for this is ‘Social Profiling’. This mainly focuses on the person’s income and education rather than looking at individual habits as this would not change a person’s ‘taste’. ‘Demographic Profiling’ is more of a contemporary method to categorize the audience because its looks at the persons age, gender, race, location and also considers their family life cycles such as if they are single, married or divorced. ‘Psychographic Profiling’ is also an appropriate way to categorize audience because it also looks at their habits and personalities.

Thriller
Thriller genre films would appeal mostly to men between the ages of 18-35. The reason for this is that the main characters are normally men in thriller films, this helps the audience to 'relate' to the characters. However different types of thrillers (the subgenres) would appeal to different audiences and different films would be intended for different ages and gender. A film could be rated 12A according to the BBCF because of the content in contains however it may not attract an audience of that age. For social profiling, every social class would watch a thriller because this would depend upon their likes/dislikes; this is because an upper middle class judge may like to watch a thriller and a lower level student may also enjoy watching thriller films although they are categorized into different profiles. However, overall the audience for a thriller film depends on the subgenre of the film and the content within it.

When a thriller film is made, they first decide who the audience for the film is and the budget. When the audience is decided, then the subgenre is chosen. Then relevant and convincing characters are chosen for the cast and crew. The content for the relevant audience is also taken into consideration.

Subgenres

Mystery Thriller
A mystery thriller would mostly be for mainstreamers/ conformists. The reason for this is because normally a thriller has mystery as a convention and therefore most of the audience who would watch a thriller would see a mystery thriller. Also because the content would be suitable for younger people and everyone would be able to watch with their families. An example for a mystery thriller is Chinatown (1974) which was produced by Robert Evans and directed by Roman Polanski. This film was rated R (Restricted- in USA) therefore under 17 would need an adult present. According to www.imdb.com it has an average rating of 8.5/10.



Romantic Thriller
It would most like to be for women because stereotypically women like to watch Romantic movies. This is because many romantic films normally have female characters and they are normally emotional films. As women as generally more emotional it would appeal to them and they can relate to and understand the characters more easily. A romantic thriller film is The Illusionist (2006) which according to IMBD has an average rating of 7.7/10. Motion Pictures rating is of is PG-13 for the United States therefore would be a 12A for the United Kingdom.

Erotic Thriller
An erotic thriller would mostly be for adults so would most likely be rated 18 as the content in this subgenre would be inappropriate for young children. For a psychographic profile, it would most likely be for an Individualist because it is not a film everyone would watch and do the individualists who do not like ‘following the crowd’ would probably watch as would not be a ‘big brand’. This would therefore not appeal to younger people because the characters would be of an older age so they would not be able to relate to the characters.