Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We carried out extensive research to determine who our audience is and our results showed that our demographic is mainly male teenagers who prefer thriller films and regularly go to the cinema. An issue with these findings is that our audience is quite limited; successful films appeal to a wide audience, whereas our target market is quite small so we need to ensure that they approve of our film or it runs the risk of failing. We could address this issue by adjusting our film slightly to appeal to a wider audience, but making sure we keep our current interested audience could be difficult. We also run the risk of alienating females as our research has shown that they prefer rom-coms to thrillers. To find out this information we used a questionnaire with 10 questions on it to establish the credentials of our target audience, we asked 10 people from the ages of 11 to 17; we used this age group because we knew this is the group we’d be aiming our film at so their opinions would be more valuable. We asked both males and females, although we knew males would be more likely to watch our production we wanted to know how we could make is more appealing to females. We asked the participants face-to-face questions and wrote their answers down, this ensures they won’t succumb to social desirability bias – they won’t say what they think they have to say, this improved the reliability of our questionnaire. We found out that most people want an opening which gradually builds tension through the form of tense music progressively building in depth and ferocity, they also want something which doesn’t give the story away; they’d rather watch something which sets the story up and makes them want to carry on watching, this suggests that people want cliff-hangers, even only a few minutes into a film. We also found that people prefer a mix of psychological and violent thrillers whilst also using quick cuts and sharp editing to keep the pace of the film up. We also asked them about flashbacks and we found that people like them, but not in abundance; one is effective enough to set the story up. So we only used one flashback, but repeated it many times by referring back to the oncoming train and including the shot of the mourner at the beginning and end of our production; we did this to increase the mystery of our production, but we also prevented the feeling of repetition by only using it when necessary, thus increasing the effectiveness of the use of flashbacks.   

 In my opinion our film should carry a 12 or 12A rating as the BBFC state that moderate violence is allowed but it should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but occasional gory moments may be permitted if they can be justified by their context. This fits our production as we do portray that death has occurred but the audience never actually witnesses it; the only violence in our production is when James hits Annabelle with a rock, but it’s not dwelled on and there is no gore so this fits in with BBFCs guidelines. We also have no sex, drugs, discrimination, and very little horror; so according to the BBFC guidelines our thriller opening would be a 12, although the rest of the film may contain more graphic images which may increase our rating to a 15. Either of these ratings would fit in perfectly with our target audience as we are aiming our production at teenagers and they’d be allowed to watch the film due to the rating.

Looking at the typical psychographics I have deduced that our psychograph would be the explorer type as they are keen to explore and enjoy new, exciting experiences; they also tend to be young students who take great pleasure from their consumer products – this fits in brilliantly with our target market.

 

 

• This is an example of our target audience – a male teenager who likes thrillers.

• The headphones indicate that he’s listening to music – music is an integral part of teenagers’ lives nowadays; this also suggests he will take a keen interest in the music in our production.
• He’s smartly dressed which suggests that he’s at school or his place of work. His lanyard indicates that he has some form of importance at his institution – this suggests that he may prefer documentaries as our research shows that that’s what important people prefer to watch.
• He’s wearing a hoodie – this is typical in modern-day teenagers as it reflects their relaxed attitudes and is in the popular fashion trends
• He reflects the average teenager by following current trends in his attire and interests; this suggests that he will enjoy our production as we made it with our target audiences’ preferences in mind.