Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

From looking at the responses to our questionnaire I learnt what the audience expected from this chosen sub-genre. We gave questionnaires to people who fit into our target audience so we were certain that we had relevant information for making our opening appealing for them. The responses showed that the most important conventions for them were little or no dialogue, tense music and only one or two main characters. We addressed this by making sure the character does not speak and the use of tense music would ensure it would not be silent and the sound would make a suspenseful atmosphere. The religion sub-genre was also popular on our questionnaire though, and this encouraged us to include a religious undertone. We showed this through the antagonist being obsessed with the Bible, the religious connotations of the title, the bible pages in the room, etc. This information was very useful because we would know what to include in order to make the thriller opening successful. We ensured that we included the conventions that came out as the most popular because this would mean it would be more likely for our target audience to enjoy it. In the open-ended question about why people like their chosen thriller sub-genre, one of the responses was ‘they usually have plot twists that make the end difficult to guess’. This inspired us to have the plot twist of the character assumed to be the protagonist, being shot at the end of the opening. Two other responses were ‘I find them exciting because they are eerie to watch’ and ‘I love the tension of a psychological’. Eeriness and tension are main themes for maybe all sub-genres of thriller, so it was obvious that we would try hard to create a tense and eerie atmosphere.