QUESTION FOUR:WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE

FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Esther Rowe

TARGET AUDIENCE

To gain research of my target audience I used a website called

Surveymonkey.com to create a list of thought out questions that would

help me to define my target audience. I created it to allow myself to

understand the audience that my thriller would be aimed at but also to

understand their preferences in film, to understand what I needed to

include and understand what wasn’t perhaps so important in creating my

piece. I decided on creating the survey through this website as it was free,

easily accessible and could be promoted through other social networking

websites. I also created a sheet of questions for those who perhaps do not

have such developed technology such as internet.. Here are my results.

AGE

40% of my audience were shown

as age 14-17 and another 40%

were shown as 18-24 years old.

This gave me a clear impression

that my target audience were

predominantly young adults.

Which allowed me to research into

films that were targeted for this

audience.

GENDERHere I found out that 75% of

my audience were female and

25% were male. Therefore I

could shape my film, through

characters, plotline and

representation to help the

female majority to be able to

connect with my piece.

However I do feel that due to

the small scale of my

questionnaire this could be

slightly inaccurate, in general

the target audience for

thrillers are predominantly

male.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Through this question I was able to

learn that 50% of my audience

were in full time further education

whilst 18% said that they were in

full time compulsory education.

This lead my to see that my target

audience was going to be

predominantly dominated by a

student audience. Therefore I could

see that my piece would be aimed

at a demographic group of c1c2d.

MOVIE INTEREST

I decided to collect this

information to gage my

audiences overall interest in

films in general. However I

decided to disregard it as I

felt it wasn’t as useful as

other questions when

planning my thriller

opening.

FILM CERTIFICATIONDue to the mature themes in our thriller we decided to make it a twelve. The fact that it contains partial nudity and moderate violence made us feel like this was a good idea, however we decided that as there was no proper nudity or any appearance of blood, we didn’t make it a 15 certificate. As well as this we felt that by making it a 12 it meant that we could distribute the product to a wider target audience as we could use social media, and through our audience questionnaire a heavy amount of our viewers were younger than 15 so we shaped it to their needs.

USES OF MY FILM FOR AN AUDIENCE…

For me there are many uses of film, to entertain, to challenge and to enable a platform for creative criticism. I feel that my piece is primarily useful for entertainment with its psychological narrative, thrill, and violence it fits perfectly within the psychological thriller genre. I feel like my film will encourage a female target audience to also get involved and connect as well as the encourage the conventional male target audience to become active participants in the piece.

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS OF MY

FILM FOR AN AUDIENCE.

Throughout this film I use the uses and gratifications theory a lot. For

example during the bath scene when Annabelle is bathing herself it allows

voyeurism. Due to the previous scene asserting male dominance it lures

them into a false sense of control, this is attacked when Alice becomes the

real antagonist not the dominant father.. This contrast to Holly wood

Cinema who usually would have the women in the film as vulnerable and

weak, having them as the antagonist challenges this cinematic convention

and allows my film to appeal to a wider, niche,, artistic market. To help

mislead the male audience I incorporate a lot of common thriller shots so

that the audience expect the women in the film to be typically weak and

vulnerable.

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS OF MY FILM FOR AN AUDIENCE.

As well as this, for those who like the thriller genre, the plot

begins with mystery and there is a sense of gratification when

the audience watch the plot unfold both through the animation

and through the later scenes. This is all accentuated by the

enigma code.

OVERALL it is difficult to decide on a particular group that will

form my audience as I have incorporated lots of different

elements in order to appeal to more and more people. I’ve

included : voyeurism, in order to appeal to the male audience to

form escapist entertainment and then reel them in with enigma,

sinister and typical thriller conventions in order to appeal to

those who enjoy the mystery that thrillers bring, as well as

breaking some of the typical Hollywood codes an conventions in

order to appeal to the niche artistic market.