Age: 16-25 year old's because the lead actors in my thriller opening are 16-17 and the younger audiences will be able to relate to these characters.
Gender: either.
The audience prefer psychological thrillers according to my questionaire and I think most audiences prefer thrillers to be mainstream because a lot of audiences go to the movies because their favourite actor is starring in the movie which I discovered through quotes from people's thoughts about movies.
Expectations from a thriller: From the questionaire audiences are looking for a psychological genre, located somewhere totally unknown to them, and they want the thriller character to remain a mystery until the end. The audiences want the soundtrack to be instrumental, and most of them agreed that the plot was the main aspect of a thriller. The audiences also didn't mind which time period it was set in as long as all the aspects of a thriller were within the film. From the quotes I looked at from different movies some audiences are attracted to the movies because of the actor in the movie, or because of the high quality advert which could always be misleading the audience.
From the questionnaire I did people wanted the killer to be a mystery until the end and a movie which this audience might particularly like would be The Uninvited where the audience think they have guessed who the murderer or wrong doer is but when they reach the end of the movie it is revealed that the audience is wrong and they are left in shock when they leave the cinema. In The Uninvited the main character Anna returns home from a mental institution after trying to commit suicide after her mother's death and when she returns home she sees that her mother's nurse is now her stepmother. Anna and her sister believe that the stepmother killed their own mother and the sisters try to find clues about their mother's death which leads to the truth of what really happened the night of her mother's death. The movie starts to be quite predictable, but then the ending shocks the audience and everything the audience had worked out is wrong and the real truth is revealed. The movie is a psychological thriller which is what the audience wanted from the questionaire, and the killer is also revealed right at the end which is another thing the audience said they liked.
The audience said in the questionaire that they wanted the killer to remain a secret until the end of the film/opening and I will apply this to my own thriller opening. The audience believe they know what is going to happen, and who the killer is but then at the end it is revealed that the victim is in fact the murderer. The plot of opening is the main aspect, even though the girl in the opening is an important factor because she looks small, innocent and you wouldn't think she would kill anybody but it turns out she is the killer. I will provide stereotypical costumes for each of my characters so the girl will be wearing everyday clothes which the audience will relate to, and the boy/"stalker" will wear all black with his hood up so his identity remains hidden.