Secondary Research: How Can I Make My Thriller Appealing To My Audience?

The BFI website has a yearbook of statistics about all the film releases and other film related facts. This allowed me to look into areas such as genre, gender audience and social group. I then used this to specifically look into the thriller genre and look at the response it had in 2012.

Genre:
In the year 2006 just under 160 million films were release in the UK and there has been a steady increase of films released since, with the exception of 2010 where the number of films released decreased (from roughly 170 million to 165 million) However the release of films has been steadily rising since and in 2012 647 films were released. This lead to an increase in cinema admissions, the average admissions for a month ranged from 2.2 million to 4.1 million. 

In 2012 thriller films were number 9 out of 17 in the list of genres ranked by gross box office this tells us that thrillers were in the top half of the table, making them fairly popular.  The thriller genre had more releases than 5 of the genres above it however it only made a gross box office of £29.8 million which is low compared to the genre just above it that made a gross box office of £37.3 million. 

In proportion of box office by genre, the thriller genre had less than 5% this is  very low compared to other genres such as Action, Comedy and Horror. This tells me that it will be hard to make my thriller appealing as compared to other genres it isn't as popular so to help promote this I should think about selecting a specific age range so that I can make the content appropriate. 

Gender:

The overall audience for the top 20 and top UK films in 2012 had a slight bias towards males who made up 52% of total cinema-goers for these films. However certain films attracted one gender more than the other, for example males preferred action films like Dredd, Wrath of the Titans and The Sweeney where as Females preferred a broader range of genres with Anna Karenina, StreetDance 2 and Nativity 2

Audience: 

it is hard to say exactly who the audience is as it is hard to obtain data for DVD's and online streaming. However what we can tell is that the proportion of people aged 45 or above going to the cinema increased gradually between 1997 and 2008 and increased sharply in 2011. This could be put down to the increase of films such as Mamma Mia! in 2008, The King’s Speech in 2011 and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in 2012. that target the older audience. The proportion of people going to the cinema aged 15-24 and 25-34 has been gradually decreasing, especially for people aged 15-24 who only make up 25% of cinema goers compared to 31% in 2011.

I am aiming to target the young with my thriller and therefore they are more likely to be using the VoD market such as Netflix and LOVEFiLM Instant. The Woman in Black ranked 5th in the audience range of 15-24 with 42% in this age group. This film is closely linked with the thriller genre so this looks like a good audience to aim my thriller at as they may be more likely to watch it. The VoD market has increased by 123% since the previous year, from an estimated £55 million (in 2011) to £122 million (in 2012.) This tells me that this audience could be good to target as it is increasing all the time