Thriller Opening: Defining And Reaching Our Audience

For our thriller opening we need to have a specific audience that we want to target and reach out to. As a group we sat down to think about the different groups of people that we felt most suited to the plan of our thriller.

We concluded that we should aim for an audience roughly our age. As a certificate, we believe we would give our thriller an age rating of 15, therefore we can explore mature ideas and thriller conventions without being too explicit or inappropriate. Our thriller target audience is also aimed at the niche audience of late teens, the thriller targets those who take for granted the comfort of their own home, the safety of familiarity by turning everyday fears into a reality. Using the film Mirrors as an initial model to play on the audiences fears we can create a sense of realistic horror, this would be scarier than making a monster-thriller and we can experiment greatly with readily available items such as mirrors, beds and wardrobes.

We decided we would reach our audience by advertising primarily on Netflix and after shows such as ''The Fall'' and ''Sherlock'' by creating a sequence of clips that are aimed to access deep-rooted phobias and horrors of the past. By getting a contract with Google and websites we could use cookies and key words so whenever somebody types in “phobias” or “clowns” somebody expressing their fears, they see an advertisement for Under The Bed, this will fear and interest them. Using demographics we can reach young adults 15 to 20 year olds by advertising based on our common audiences interest. For example 8pm until 11pm on BBC3 and Channel 5 frequently to extensively hit our target audience.

  To advertise we could use a guerrilla marketing scheme where we place people’s obvious fears in public places in an attempt to scare them and advertise our film more. Using word of mouth and viral marketing with video clips and this unique idea buzz would get generated easier.

Technically we could begin with a montage of people’s phobias; spiders and clowns, heights and being buried alive, this will immediately set the tone and register of the film, it’s psychologically teasing and will intrigue a lot of the audience initially. Followed by the quote “an eye for an eye makes the entire world blind” by Gandhi which is the metaphor and theme, notion and morals behind the creation of Under The Bed.