Target Audience for our short film - Caroline

The target audience for our psychological thriller "Sleep Tight", may we wide and versatile as the thriller genre has spread oover age boundaries in recent years. When films such as Hitchcock's "Vertigo" was released the target audience for a thriller of its type was an older audience of around 24-40, but as this genre has gained momentum and gained publicity, the audience got younger.

Most thrillers now are certified to be aged 15 or 18 which limits the younger audiences, but does also show that a teenage audience is interested in thriller films and the genre. Releases such as "Se7en" have seen a youth audience rise.

This table shows the average audience for "Se7en" on its release.

The table shows that there were a huge amount more teenagers (under 18) attending the film than females and males aged 45 and over. This shows a teenage audience are interested in the thriller genre, and that our film should be aimed at the 15-30 market, majority male, but not exclusively.

This research into the thriller genre and its target audience's for different films means that it is now possible to make a target audience profile for our thriller film:

The age group of the target audience is around 16-25 years, as 75% of the thriller-viewers sample were students. The gender of the target audience isn't as specific as age ranges or demographic classification, but is important nonetheless. For our film, the gender of the target audience would mainly be males, though females could be attracted to the film also. Personally I feel that females will also be acttracted to the film due to the presence of a female character.