Targeting My Audience
Now that I have gotten a clearer idea of what I need to do to actually create my film opening brief in general, I want to see how the strategies I have learned actually appeal to an audience. I think this will help me focus my brief in the right direction. Since I tend to struggle to find information on dystopian thrillers as its own genre, I'm going to conduct this research in terms of thrillers. Then, I will put sub-categories for my demographics of interest; age, gender, ethnicity, education, and distribution patterns. I'll try to apply this information to dystopian thrillers as its own genre afterwards.
Thrillers
Age:
Thrillers seem to be enjoyed pretty equally among all age groups, but are slightly more popular among people ages 45 to 54 years old (85% versus an average of 83% preference) as this genre usually references psychological thrillers. However, they also appeal strongly to younger audiences (teenagers and young adults up to 29) due to the usually high-speed nature of the genre.
Gender:
Thrillers, again, are appeal just slightly more to males (84% vs 83%), but there isn't really a significant difference between the two genders. However, it is important to note that dystopian thrillers are more popular amongst women as they tend to revolve around female protagonists. This provides a new sense of relatability and depth to the films for women.
Ethnicity:
People of African American descent tend to gravitate towards thrillers the most (85%). To add, White people prefer thrillers at the second highest rate of 84%. However, because dystopias are meant to make specific commentary on broad ideas, these films tend to appeal to (or attempt to appeal to) a wide audience.
Education:
Psychological thrillers appeal most to those with higher education as they tend to favor films that provoke thought or challenge ideas. On the other hand, traditional thrillers are most enjoyed by people with low levels of education, such as high school students, who tend to look for a "thrill."
Distribution Patterns:
My film would do better if it was released in theaters first, as the majority of films do. Furthermore, thriller as a genre is ranked 5th out of 15th in its market share in North America making up over 20 billion dollars (7.38%) of the total box office between 1995 - 2026. Additionally, thriller has been slowly on the rise since 2021, so much so that, it is predicted it will attribute to a record high of 21.2% of the industry's total box office in 2026.
Reflection
This research has given me perspective of the main demographic that would enjoy my film. I also now know that my film would be the most successful if I release in theaters first, and then move it to streaming. I can use this not only to determine how to distribute my film but to cast characters that my audience would relate to.
I want my film to provoke deep thought about the state of our future by challenging a general perspective my audience through commentary on certain aspects of our past - and even present. However, I also want to make my film more fast-paced than a psychological thriller. Because the future is so reliant on us young people, I want to appeal to them the most, which is one of the reasons I decided to do a dystopian thriller.
Now that I know my main demographic would be Black teenagers (and upper-middle aged adults), I want to begin writing a script. I don't know how to actually write a script, so before I can do this, I need to research how to. Before I can research how to write a script, I need to know at least the general structure of a storyline for a film within my genre. So, that's what I'll be doing in my very next blog post.
Until then, farewell!
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