Audience Research Conclusion

The maximum allowed certificate for our film is 15, our target audience has to be above this age.

Certification

According to the BBFC website, a 15 has no prohibited themes as long as it is appropriate for a 15 year old. There is also no restriction of strong language provided it is used in the correct context, however an over load will result in a higher rating. There may also be discriminatory or offensive terms as long as they are shown to not be endorsed. Nudity is restricted to not strong detail, unless it is for educational purposes. There can be many strong references to sexual content however. Horror/threat and violence are all allowed as long as it's not focused on sadistic or sexualised content. Many things such as dangerous behaviour that teenagers may copy, such as suicide or self harm are allowed as long as it isn't considered to not dwell on the detail which can be copied.

Target Audience
This is a conclusion to our Audience Research, although I have done this before underneath the online survey this gives a much more precise insight into our audince along with the results of the vox pops which we then link together.

Most commonly, thrillers are seen as aimed at men in the usual target age of 15 to 30. The reach of our online survey, however, showed that our audience will most likely be predominantly female (over 55% of responses were from women) and hit the age range from 15 to 21 (83% of responders). The fact that our responders mostly saw films at least once a week (34%) and went to the cinema every few months (44%) is an important sign of the fact that the people responding are fairly knowledgeable about films as they clearly enjoy them. The most popular genres in this demographic were Comedy (given, on average, about 4 points out of a possible 6), Thriller (given about the same) and Sci-Fi (given just above 3.5 points). This seems like a good match, considering that it hits two of our main genres, ranking them 2nd and 3rd. Our film has two female protagonists, and so the near-80% answer of "Yes" to the question of whether an audience member would see a film like that is also an encouraging sign.

The responses in the Vox Pops revealed the wide range of tastes that we will be expected to cater to within our target demographic. The most common response for people's favourite thing about films was the expectation of either amazement or other strong emotions; something we plan to attempt to evoke with our work anyway. The sampled people also seemed to be more concerned with filming style/directors than with actors, which was surprising to me, but pleasing considering the fact that we are running a very small-scale production and so style and production is more significant to us than an unobtainable Hollywood cast. Predictability and cliches were the most commonly disliked features of films; in short, the audience obviously doesn't like it when film makers treat them as stupid or try to force-feed them things they've seen many times before. This is, naturally, something we will try our best to avoid.

DY