Audience Expectations

Thriller is a popular genre within young adults aged 18-25, this is because they are drawn in by the intense plot and graphic action, which is common for all variations of thrillers. Psychological thrillers tend to appeal to the older people.


Primary

I created a survey and handed them out to some students at my school, the survey was based on what they thought a thriller should depict and the complexity of the story line.

Do you agree that psychology adds a positive complex element to a thriller?
This question received some contrasting opinions, 30% of the sample said that they would rather an easy-to-follow thriller where everything is relatively straight forward and the main story be focused on an enemy, rather than the psychology. However it is clear that a lot of people thought that it would add an interesting and intriguing element to the film.

As the audience, would you expect the psychology behind the thriller to be shown through the use of cliches within the opening?
The majority of the population answered no - cliches tend to be quite cheesy and remove the psychology behind the film that they are watching. The 20% that said yes were more into simple thrillers, stated above.

Similar to ‘Psycho' where in the  opening, the psychology is shown as a stereotype, do you think this is a benefit to an opening or not?
Only 30% answered yes to this question, most had not seen the film and the others thought that stereotypes were getting quite outdated - they wanted new ideas and thoughts.

Do you like contrapuntal music or do you feel it is more beneficial for the audio to match the action?
70% of people answered that they liked parallel sound - since they compared contrapuntal sound with horror - which didn't seem like a popular film genre.


Secondary

1. What do you expect to see when you are watching a thriller?
A hard, maybe even brutal story with some kind of insanity.
I would expect the thriller to be scary.
Scary, fast paced, creepy.
A dark mysterious story which is realy interesting.
Action, psychological aspects and romance.

2. What was the last thriller you saw?
Purge: Anarchy
James Bond 007 Spectre
The house at the end of the street

Other expectations - from online research I discovered that thrillers typically have a protagonist and an antagonist, during scenes of these characters, the most used shots are close ups and mid shots. Thrillers tend to shock the audience with violence or intrigue the audience with a deep plot.