Audience

Different sub genres of thrillers will attract different audiences, but mainly they are aimed at people aged 15 and up. This is because the suspense, tension, anxiety and anticipation found in thrillers would not be suitable for children. Also children may not understand the story lines, plots twists or techniques such as red herrings which is what defines thrillers and makes them a separate genre. Some main themes in thrillers are pursuit, crime, spying/espionage, obsessions, terrorism and political conspiracy. Some of these would not be suitable for children or perhaps too complicated for them to follow.
Social profiling and demographic profiling can be used to help directors and producers choose a target audience that their film would be best suited for. They consider many details of their target audience to make sure when the film is produced people will want to want it.
Social profiling divides group of people depending on their class, job, income etc. It is split into very well paid professionals (banker or surgeon), well paid professionals (lawyer or teacher), skilled non-manual workers (bank clerk or junior manager), skilled workers (electrician or plumber, semi and unskilled manual workers (postman or driver) and lower level (unemployed or students).
Demographic profiling divides people into groups by their gender, race, age, sexuality, hobbies etc. which bases their film preferences on stereotypes such as girls like sad films that make you cry and boys like action films that pump your adrenaline.

The British Board for Film Classification has guidelines for each age rating/certificate for films. For the full guidelines visit http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/guidelines

As our opening sequence will be aiming for a 15 certificate it may include the following:

• strong violence, although strong sadistic or sexualised violence is unlikely to be acceptable
• frequent strong language, although repeated, aggressive use of extremely strong swear words will be classified an 18 rating
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity, as long as there is no strong, graphic detail
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour, although as a whole it must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.
• drug taking

No theme is prohibited for a 15 rated film, although there are restrictions to the extent of the themes above. 

Our clip will be a 15 because then we can create tension, suspense without worrying about breaking the rules of a 12 but it is not necessary to rate it an 18 as we will not be using strong or extreme references or images of drug use, sex, discrimination, violence or swearing. We are hoping to make a psychological or horror thriller so looking at examples of existing films of this sub genre they are mostly rated 15.