Who would be the audience for your media product, and how did you attract/address your

audience?

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Why do people watch horror films?• Horror films have an added element of entertainment and

excitement. Audiences chose to watch these films mainly because they have the thrill factor, compared to other genres such as comedy which are designed to be humorous or thriller which are designed to be action pact and interesting.

Horror• The film genre which I will be studying the target audience for is

Horror films. Knowing your genre and your target audience helps the film makers know what content to include and what not to include. The aim for all films is make decent revenue from the film, and by knowing your target audience will help you out.

• Our target audience should have no required background. Students or unskilled workers with little educational background should still be able to grasp the concept of our opening sequence and fully aware of the content involved. The class which I think would go and watch an horror are a middle/working class. This is because teenagers are more likely relate to our film because our film fit in with the characters shown in our film.

• I think for our movie it could be any race as there is no specific race to watch our type of film. However when producing our film we can also target our audience by the use of a range of different ethnicities in the cast. The race of the characters in the film can be seen as being very important, if the audience are the same race as members of the cast the audience will then feel that they are able to relate to the character. The use of different ethnicities therefore helps to widen the target audiences.

• It would obvioulsy be aimed more at those interested in horror films, but also those who likes a film with a mystery, where you are not aware of what is going on completely all the time. We would like to make our film have a social aspect to it, where people within their social groups can still talk and discuss it.

• Our opening sequence shall be directed to both male and females. When researching we found films that are aimed at both genders deemed to be more popular than most.

• The age range for our target audience will be around 15+ as we feel teenagers would mainly take an interest more in the content than maybe someone of the older generation. We also chose this age category for target market as my research from existing institutions showed that 15-24 year old’s attended the cinema more than other age categories, this is shown in official statistics.We also discovered the common age of someone watching a horror film is around the age of 15 to 25. Watching a horror movie gives a thrill and can excite a younger aimed target audience more than any other. The younger age range is also susceptible to being put off the film by violence or unnatural images which makes the audience have a negative reaction.

• We will also be considering audience theory/s when creating our horror opening sequence.

GENDER

Deciding who our audience was aimed at was a large part of our research. Depending on what our target audience we wanted to attract, finalised what content we did and didn’t include. It helped that horror is a popular genre choice for both males and females therefore we decided to target both genders for our audience rather than being more direct for example chick flicks targeted more of a female based audience and action mystery films targeting more of a male based viewers.

AGE RATING

• We came up with our age rating once our production was made. We came to this decision of this by looking at other films and their content in comparison to their age rating and also the BBFC. The BBFC was really useful as we were able to compare our opening sequence to what they classed as a 15 rating and we then found it was a match for ours.

AGE RATING• We gave the rating of our film as a age 15 rating which means

that the audience could be from any age of 15 and above, we decided to give the restriction to young younger than 15 not being able to watch the film because it isn’t suitable for them therefore we need to take into consideration that they may take idea from the film because young people pick things up easily, copy and use them in everyday life which could be deadly. By choosing a 15 rating this meant that we didn’t include any offensive language, behaviour and the horror can be strong without being sexualised to something more, the reason we chose to use a 15 rating is because we felt that it gives us the chance to appeal to younger audience compared to other horror films such as ‘Scream’ which are rated at 18+

AGE RATING

• Our opening sequence has been made so that it would appeal to both genders creating a wider audience to view the media product, due to the fact that my media product is a 15 it means that it’s the type of media product which would appeal to someone of my age range but also has been made so that someone age 30+ would be able to enjoy viewing the product too. Younger consumers of films usually are only included in part time employment therefore they are able to visit the cinema occasionally when there are films which really appeal and intrigue them, there is always an advantage and disadvantage to everything.

AGE RATING

• As our film is a horror and not many have been made to appeal to a younger audience to make an impact because we wanted it to make a difference to the films which have already been made in a similar way.

How we attracted our audience?

Introduction

• We attracted and addressed our audience by using our characters to our advantage and also the help of three theorists, Richard Dyer, Abraham Masion and Blumier + Katz. We came across these constantly being used by productions to make their films unique and enhancing them to seem more appealing to target audiences.

RICHARD DYER

• Firstly, Richard Dyer claimed that the people go looking for things in films that they may lack in life. For example, safety and security is a common one.

• People don’t tend to experience ‘horror’ as such, in an everyday environment and may seek a thrill out of it in horror films, without any physical harm caused to them.

• We applied this to our production by creating a sense of fear and tension built up within the opening sequence to create what our target audience would be expecting.

BLUMIER AND KATZ • Secondly, Blumier and Katz came up with the uses and gratifications theory. This theory

indicated that people want certain pleasures out of the films they watch, such as · The need to be INFORMED and EDUCATED about the world in which they live· The need to IDENTIFY personally with the characters and situations in order to learn more about themselves· The need to be ENTERTAINED by a range and variety of well constructed texts· The need to use the media as a talking point for SOCIAL INTERACTION· The need to ESCAPE from their ‘daily grind’ into other worlds and situations

We included most, but not all. We did this by mainly our use of characters.

CHARACTERS

• It was important that we attracted our audience and most of all we did this through our characters. Taking into consideration the rating of our film we made the film appealing by using young characters in order for the audience to relate to them, not in the way which unusual things happen but how the characters behaved and how it affected them. By using young male characters, who then became the victims, showed them in a vunerable position allowing the audience to sympathies with them.

• We allowed them to be stereotypically understood

ABRAHAM MASLOW

Maslow explores human needs, just as Dyer does, but it starts off as a physical needs and works its way up to psychological. For example we physically want to feel safe, but then we also need to psychologically.

We did this by playing with people psychological needs by making them feel scared and anxious.