Thriller research

The demographic for my thriller is most likely to be males between the ages of 16 and 24. The main character from my film is around 16 or 17. This allows an audience of this age to relate to the character well.

The social classes of the characters in my film are not clear.  The setting however, suggests a poor working class background. Because of this i believe that a more working class audience would be attracted to my film.
All of the actors used in my thriller are white British people. Because of this it is likely that my thriller will attract a mainly, western, white ethnicity.
Films that may relate to my own are:  Leon, because of the relations of drugs to the father who is murdered.
Eastern Promises, due to the fight scenes.

A typical image of someone from the target demographic would be a 16-24 year old British male who lives fast and for thrills, of a working class background.

My Thriller target audience

Gender – This film would be aimed relatively specifically at an all male audience aged between 16 and 24  This is simply because of the all male cast and general masculine interest in punch ups and motorbikes. 

The audience will be able to relate to the characters as they are of young ages.  Also, the idealistic adrenaline fuelled excitement of a classic ‘boys toy’ would increase interest mainly of a young, male audience.

Character dress

The main character (with the most screen time) in my film opening is dressed to look simple, plain and inexpensive. This is because we are showing his background and that he is not in complete poverty but at the same time he is definitely not well off.  The plain and boring colours represent his unhappy and pessimistic outlook on his own situation.  We chose his shoes to be big, stylish and purple.  This is to give our character some obvious identity (considering our film is mostly set in the dark). This makes the film less confusing for the viewer.

The second character (Thug) has a hoody under a leather jacket.  The hoody is typical of modern, young, thuggish type teenagers/young adults who are discreet about their identity.  The leather jacket over the hoody represents a gangster type thug.

Social class

My thriller would intrigue both a working and middle social class because of the unfortunate young character Tom.  He has a poor background that people could relate to and he is young, also intriguing a younger audience.

Character Profiles

There are 3 characters that will be in our thriller.

One is being played by Tom, he is the teenager who has been kicked out of school for drug abuse and general behaviour issues linked to it. He is the main character in the film, the one who gets beaten up because he owes money to the gang in relation to his drug addiction. He is a character who we are to feel sympathetic for in his situation.

The second character in the film is going to be played by Sam’s brother George. He is playing a sort of messenger for the gang, he meets Tom's character in the car park and beats him up and threatens him. We see little of his face to create mystery.

The third character in the film is my uncle. He will be playing a biker who comes across Tom laying down in the dark in the car park after the conflict between tom and the gang member. Instead of having the usual biker who is mean and a bad guy, our biker is going to break that convention and help me. We are doing this because we didn’t want everything to be the same as every other thriller that involves a biker, we wanted to create conventions and also test them to try and intregue the reader further.

Mise en scene

The mise en scene of our thriller follows the conventions. The lighting in the car park creates a very good atmosphere because you can only see one side of the car park, this is because lights only work on one side and the other side is completely black. There are only a few cars in the car park which gives the feeling that it’s a very derelict place. All of the graffiti on the walls suggests that no one really cares about the car park.


The clothing in the film is very generic to what type of person we are trying to portray. My character is very scruffy. He wears a coat which is too big for him and messy shoes. This portrays that he doesn’t really care about his appearance. This is also portrayed well through his smoking habit which is also a convention. The second person in the film is Sam’s brother George. He is wearing a hood and a leather jacket. The hood is usually linked with gangs and other bad types of people. It also creates a sense of mystery which is what we wanted in order to create curiosity and interest. The leather jacket is just another piece of clothing which helps to convey the message that this man means business and is possibly in a better financial position.

Shotlist

1) Birds eye view of traffic, it will be sped up.
2) Side view of the traffic, medium shot, still sped up.
3) Long shot to medium shot of character one walking towards the camera.
4) Extreme close up of the characters face whilst smoking.
5) Close up of character two walking down stairs, there is a fence in the foreground.
6)Long birds eye view of character walking.
7) Long shot of character two walking past a pond.
8) Close up of the pond & character twos reflection.
To be completed...