Secondary Audience Research

Comparable films

Paranormal activity 1 and 2 are both of a similar genre to my chosen genre. The films suggests guidelines in which I should follow in order to target the audience who watch these films. The suspense and thrill of horror films is seen to appeal more to females; being the main audience of the paranormal activity trilogy. This may be due to the fact the film is a psychological horror and does not feature gore, inferring women prefer horror films to not feature gore whereas men may prefer a horror film to feature gore, this is demonstrated by the saw information in which shows a higher percentage of males watching the slasher horror.

Audience

In the previous slide it can be seen that the age range of the audience of this particular horror film being above eighteen and below twenty four suggests the characters in which I need to use should be of a similar age. From researching this Film it can be seen that women are the main audience for horror films such as this film, thus I Should aim to use mainly women characters. Due to restrictions placed on me when producing my product I am unable to use actors under the age of eighteen thus constricting the age range IAm able to work with.

Class

The dominant class audience is C1, thus inferring the location in which I need to use needs to mainly target this audience. As the the film is filmed in middle class areas the mainly working class audience watch to see the dilemma happen to people of a higher class, thus suggesting I should chose a location of a middle class background in order to target this specific audience. The subject of class also enables me to determine what type of characters I should use and what class they should be.

Ratings Film ratings are provided by the BBFC in order to guide audiences to the age restrictions of a film. This is in order to protect audiences from content in which may be inappropriate for their age. Thus these ratings are put in place to guide audiences to which films they are able or unable to see. For example the explicit content of an R rated film would not, under any circumstances be shown to a child. However the ratings also give a slight sense of what the film will be like, horror films tend to have a rating of 15 or above whereas children's films will have a U or PG rating. Sub genres of comedies can also be inferred from the ratings for example a family comedy will be suitable for all ages being a PG or below rating, whereas a more quirky indie comedy will be of a rating of 12 to 15 usually including mild bad language.

Restrictions

Due to restrictions from the BBFC, explicit content is prohibited from being featured in film trailers and posters as the audience have no choice to whether they see the advertisements for the film. Thus any explicit content such as sexual references, gore or the use of weaponscould cause serious offence to viewers of the promotional products.

Reflection

From conducting this secondary audience research I have learnt the guidelines in which I need to follow in order to target my specific audience of women between the ages of fifteen to twenty three. Being a horror film I have also found that there are restrictions to what I can feature in my trailer. I can however infer violence but I can not feature it in my trailer. This research has also demonstrated the rating in which my trailer needs to be, due to the contents of the horror trailer and also to target the specific audience in which I aim to target.