Primary Audience Research

Purpose: To have a better understanding of the target audience for my film, I have created a survey to conduct audience research about people’s interest in films (specifically thrillers). 

Methodology: Online survey—Google Form

Distribution Methods: individual messages

Objective: Gain 30 responses (exceeded with 39 responses)

Duration: 10.11.2023 - 17.11.2023

Survey

Survey questions

Survey Response Database

Takeaways

General - Demographic questions

According to the responses, the age group from 18 to 30 years old is 69.2%. This is understandable because thriller movies might be too disturbing for younger audiences, especially with violent themes. While the primary audience is young adults, the portion of respondents under 18 years old also makes up 23.1%. This group of audience is mainly high schoolers, who usually enjoy the thrilling effect.

The percentage of respondents who are students (in high school or in university) is 92.3%, and the other small portion includes people who are employed with jobs. Students are more targeted towards “Who are you?” as they could emphasize the social issues mentioned in the film, such as school bullying.

While most thriller films are targeted toward male audiences, my collected data showed that females are more dominant compared to males. According to my research on the sub-genres of thrillers, psychological thrillers like “Who Are You?” tend to be more appealing to female audiences due to the depth of emotions that the sub-genres exploit, which explains the result.

The survey is distributed in Vietnam, therefore there was no surprise when the data showed that  Vietnamese dominated the response with 97.4%. With this result, I will need to do some more research on the global market for thriller films since I want to aim at a global audience. This is because my opening sequence has limited dialogue with themes regarding global issues, therefore I think that “Who are you?”  would be open to all nationalities to enjoy.

Thriller/genre-related questions

Out of 39 response, 87.2% enjoys watching movies in general and their top favorite genres are recorded to be comedy, drama, and romance. Thriller ranked number 4 out of all the genres asked, followed by action and science fiction. According to the data, the thriller is not the favorite genre but 22/39 people enjoy watching it, which represents that there is a group of audience interested in the genre.

While thriller might not be the audience's go-to movie genre 66.7% of the total respondents stated that they enjoy watching thrillers. When asked specifically about their preferred thriller, psychological thriller ranks first with 39.4%, followed by crime thriller and survival thrillers. With the majority of the respondents to my survey being female, it is understandable that psychological thriller is the most chosen sub-genre. Based on the result, I can be more confident that “Who are you?” is going to be enjoyable for everyone.

However, the data showed a negative sight when the response showed that 41% of respondents don’t watch thrillers that often. In a month, the majority of responses are biased towards never and not very often. Despite the demand for thriller movies being low, I can target the specific group that is loyal thriller lovers, such as 7.7% of the survey respondents, who watch thriller very often in a month.

The final question that was asked in the survey was how interested are the audience to my idea. By having them read my logline, I found out that the majority find it interesting. While most of the responses selected the scale ⅗, the response from 4 to 5 takes up 46.4% of the total 39 responses, which is a positive result.

In conclusion, I will be targeting primarily young adults and secondly students from 16 to 18 years old. Females are more likely targeted, however, “Who are you?” will be enjoyable for all genders as well as nationality. There is also a loyal group of thriller lovers that I could target and they enjoy thrilling effects, so there is a chance that my film could appear interesting to them. Overall, I believe that based on my audience research, “Who are you?” has the potential to become a successful project.