Audience research

Thriller/psychological thriller audience

Primary research findings

As of 27/3, we had garnered 70 responses, generally from audience similar to our own peers, at the age of 14-18

Here are some of our findings:

•  Most people (55.7%) preferred to thriller/suspense as their favorite genre
•  However, the frequency that people arrive to the cinema watching a thriller/suspense is spread across from rarely to always, which is interesting to look into. A suspection of mine is that as people go to the cinema with friends, they would choose mostly popular movies that can please a large number of people, than personal viewing of thriller
• The majority of people find 
• For more indepth finding, click here

Below is a model response in our survey form 👇

Secondary reseach

• Demographic: 

• Young adults (15 - 25 years old)
• According to Nielsen.com, horrors/thriller fans are also more diverse than average consumer of other genre
• True crime, a subsection of suspense/thriller, is said to have more female audience to male, at 58% to 42% (according to today.you.gov)

• Highest grossing thriller:

According to www.the-numbers.com, the highest grossing thrillers are as following:

• The Dark Knight (2008): $1.006 billion
• The Hunger Games (2012): $766.5 million 
• Joker (2019): $1.069 billion
• The Martian (2015): $653.6 million
• The Sixth Sense (1999): $672.8 million 
• Inception (2010): $728.5 million 
• Gravity (2013): $685.7 million
• Jaws (1975): $476.5 million

From there, we could see that highest grossing thrillers are ones from big production companies, such as Warner Bros., 20th Century Studios, which correlates how much box office they generated. However, it’s worth noting that those movies are popular on their own in the wealth of pop culture content, showing how much audience anticipation built around them. 

• Why is thriller popular:

• Uses and Gratifications (active audiences): noting that one of the functions of media is to diverge/entertain themselves (Blumler and Katz, 1974). Therefore, submerging in suspense would subvert their expectations of real world problems, as horror/suspense is sometimes too violent/fabricated that the audience is allowed to get away from everyday problems and focus on the enigma at hand. 
• Suspense strategies (Unknown, 2014): Suspense is built around these narrative strategies:
• FRAME ; exposing the frame; using to reveal and conceal contentJUXTAPOSITION: formal tensions, transitions, tonal contrasts.
• PAUSE/GAP ; omission of content, condensation, protraction
• ECHO mirror/repetition
• CLUE/CATAPHOR; foreshadowing, fragmentation; relationship between parts and whole.
• Paradox of suspense: trying to explain that suspense cannot be experienced repeatedly as it would lose the tension building up from viewing clues, thus detesting the purpose of suspense (Brewer, 1996), (Chun et. al, 2020). However, it is added that suspense can be re-experienced as the audience emerges in a narration, previous understanding (factual) of that narration is forgotten, or the audience would not expect exact repetition of suspense to happen. (Walton, 1990)

    🌱 Therefore, it is understandable how suspense and other adjacent genre is so relevant to our society, and its significance to the audience environment that surrounded it. 

        Suspense conventions strictly relate to media technique conventions, such as exploration of narrative theme, editing technique, sound technique, etc. 

        Moreover, as suspense usually contains subtext of societal issues, a reflection on them could portray the cultural zeitgeist we are in (e.g Joker critique on superficial capitalism society and empathy).