EVALUATION: QUESTION 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

WHY A TARGET AUDIENCE AND ATTRACTING IT IS IMPORTANT: A target audience is important to a media producer, for the success of their product. In this case, of films, and maybe TV, producers should try and make their product look attractive to the target audience by including certain elements that might help this, allowing for more people to watch the film, and overall, to try and help to make the money back.

I think that this would be a less likely option for filmmakers and producers looking towards a very niche target audience, or they may just be doing it for creative rather than commercial reasons, choosing not to include certain aspects that might try and make them more money by attracting a larger audience.

Having a production without a specific target audience would not attract people, because there generally wouldn’t be anything interesting there for them to support the success of the film, losing an audience.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE:

The target audience for our production, Paranormal Mind, is a generally young (15-30) male based group (our cast is male; more relatable for the audience) that would generally be situated in the British Isles (the familiar setting) with a C2-E socioeconomic group.

However, I do not think that this is an essential part, as these groups can seem outdated with different range of opportunities available, which can cloud the groups. Some richer, more middle class people, may have a job that seems unskilled or working class, and they may well be situated in the same place as “lower classes”.

Also, this would apply to the farther end of the age range, since this film would appeal to younger people who have no control over this group, since their parents/guardians (who may well not fit into the target audience) have control over their minor’s group.

RELATABLE CHARACTERS

We tries to make our characters relatable to the audience, since they are the same sort of group as the target audience (TA). Our characters are around the age of 20 (inside the TA’s age range), and male, with a similar sort of post-teenage attitude. Doing this would help the audience connect more with the characters, and have a greater interest in their outcome in the film.

This was evident in the audience feedback that we conducted. One person commented that the characters are “certainly relatable to many teenagers”. The profile of this respondent was a male in the target age range (more specifically 16-18). This person also made the comment that they would watch the rest of the film, since they wanted “to know more about Andrew’s background”, suggesting that they want to know and connect with the main character more, supporting our way of trying to make our characters relatable.

Another respondent to our feedback disagreed and thought that the characters were not relatable. In a way, this does still support the point, as this person, whilst they did find other parts of the video enjoyable, were not necessarily in our TA. They were in the age range of our TA, but they were not our targeted gender. The respondent was female rather than male, so the fact that they could not connect as well with the characters could be due to the fact that it was not targeted at them, which could also support that our characters were relatable.

ENIGMA

We left the production hanging on a cliff-hanger twice: once when the main titles ran after Andrew’s encounter with the entity and when the opening sequence ended, leaving it open to show a further narrative for the film. Doing this would hopefully make people wonder what would happen next, and keep them watching the production, hopefully making for an engaging and more successful text.

75% of respondents would continue watching, which is a majority, with those saying they wouldn’t watch it, not being in the target audience and commenting that it was “scary”, an effect we were hoping to achieve to an extent, to make the production thrilling, but this respondent did not fully match our target audience, and so it does not necessarily detract from the success of our inclusion of enigma.

For those who would watch the rest of the film, they commented that “it seems intriguing” and that they “want to find out what’s going on”, showing that the use of enigma in our opening sequence was successful.