Q. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our film opening can be defined within the sub-genre of Psychological horror (which is sometimes also known as Psychological Thriller).
Before I could answer this question, I did some brief research in to the target audience for psychological Horror films.
http://www.slideshare.net/CharlotteEmmaVicki/target-audience-of-thrillers
http://billiepearsonportfolio.weebly.com/target-audience.html
https://prezi.com/jzs6b3a9ykxn/target-audience-thriller-films/
http://britasthrillerhannah.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/thriller-audiencesg.html
http://nfgssupernova.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/target-audience-of-psychological.html
Finding out the below information:
From this research, we noticed that, the audience of this type of film differs from the stereotypical audience of Horror films in general (usually Teenage/young adult males), as we found that the normal audience for Psychological Horror films are young females (often aged 18+). As the research suggests this may be because younger audiences would find the contents of most psychological Horror’s either to intellectually challenging or too frightening, being further supported by the fact that most Psychological Horror films are rated 18 anyway. Although the age bracket for audiences of this type of film is quite clear to define, it is harder to assign a particular gender as being the targeted audience of Psychological Horror films. However, research seems to indicate that Psychological Horror films are more often than not directed at a female audience, who, stereotypically are drawn more toward the emotional side of these films.
From our research we also learnt that the type of people who watch Psychological Horror films are likely to be creative, as the ideas they present to an audience are usually quite abstract. Similarly, it seems that to fully understand and appreciate Psychological Horror films, you must be relatively intelligent and of a curious nature. However there is no fixed or typical social class that can be associated with fans of this type of film with both the rich and poor engaging in Psychological horror films; although it may be said that such films are better suited to those of the middle and upper as one would associate a lack of education, and thus understanding of these films with a lower class audience.
Below is a drawing of what we would imagine a member of our Target Audience looks like. She is annotated with some key facts.
Why would our Target Group Member watch our film?
Our film is likely to be an independent film, the creative nature of the above target group member, and her interest in the indie and alternative genres of film, would mean that she would probably find our film appealing because of this. The fact she is a Graphic Art student is a testament to her creativity, with her hobbies also being creative too. Her creative nature would mean that she would have an open mind, being likely to be intrigued by our unusual plot line, whilst still being willing to go along with and engage in some of the more abstract aspects of our film, such as the fact that one of our protagonists is a talking bear. Her status as a middle class, female student make her a stereotypical target for our film, and someone who is likely to visit the cinema often to watch films (as a student her budget would be quite tight, and visiting the cinema is not too expensive, thus being something she would be likely to do).The fact that our protagonist is also a female, may mean that this particular person would be more likely to watch our film as they may feel like they can relate to her, being also female. However, our target member is significantly older than ‘Sasha’, but given her intellect (which is implied in the fact she is a university student), she is still likely to be able to engage with and attempt to understand the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings.
How other Films appealed to a Target Audience similar to ours
Black Swan- This is a Psychological film, with a target audience that would be similar to our own (as we have discovered from the research of others such as: http://nfgstsunami.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/audience-research-black-swan.html). The main target audience for this film would be Females aged between 15-29. Fox Searchlight who produced this film, attempted to appeal to this target audience of this film by…
- Creation of film posters
- The nature of the Film’s content- This film was about Ballerina’s making it more likely to appeal to females than males
- Creation and distribution of film trailers
- Making the age rating of their film a ’15’- which was the minimum age of their target audience
Knowing how the audience of Black Swan was appealed to, we have considered some ways we might make our film appeal to a similar audience. We could entice them firstly, by creating a trailer which highlights the best and most intriguing parts of our film. This trailer, like the Black Swan Trailer would be shown on several different platforms. We might also do as the creators of this film did and show our film at several film festivals, specifically at the BFI London Film Festival. This is a festival which our target member would probably attend, as the main attendee’s to these type of festivals tend to be students. Given the fact that our specific target member is a Graphic designer, it is likely she would also be intrigued by a well designed film poster; one which is eye catching and unique like the Black Swan Poster.
Feedback from Our Target Audience on the film opening:
One member of our target Audience was Megan’s sister, Hannah who is soon to be 15, she is much like the target member we have shown above as she is highly creative, a fan of indie and Alternative music and also Psychological Horror Films. She said that our film opening was “Intriguing, using a variety of creative camera angles. Its creative nature was interesting and appealed to me because I’m really interested in art”, but she also said “However, I think that the lighting you used could have been a little darker, especially in the bit where the ‘mother character’ was walking up the stairs, as Psychological films often have really dark lighting to create suspense. Particularly in films like ‘The Shining’, which is one of my Favourite films.”
Given this feedback, we can see that in order to appeal to members of our target group, such as Megan’s sister, it is paramount that the final quality of our film is excellent. It is also of equal importance that it adheres to our chosen Genre as much as possible, because this will be the main thing which will attract our audience members to our film. This makes sense given that fans of Psychological Horror films will naturally most want to see a Psychological Horror film which wholly conforms to this genre. We would also need to collate more feedback from our Target Audience to move further on from here, and try to appeal to our Target Audience in as many ways as possible.
jupiterproductionsmedia.wordpress.com 