Evaluation Question 4

Foundation Production- Evaluation

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We identified our target audience and aimed our thriller to people aged 15 and over around 25. We felt that this was the best manageable audience to distribute to and the best to advertise our opening to as they are around the same age group as we are. We decided to aim the thriller opening at males and females as we felt that both genders would enjoy watching out thriller. We also felt that both genders would benefit from certain features in our thriller, for example the male audience would like to see a female heroine, which we included in our thriller. We also wanted to aim our thriller at all races and nationalities across the world. This would advertise our thriller opening worldwide and would draw in a lot of attention towards it from different cultures. The social economic class of our audience would be in the region of C1 (Nurse Professions), C2 (Electrician Professions) and E (Students). We thought our audience would watch our thriller as it is a modern representation on real crime scenes happening in the world today. It also focuses on the stereotypes that the characters have and can create a small piece of footage that will entertain our audience. We looked at these particular types of audiences because of their media interest such as TV and film and the fact that most of them would be in our target range.

This is a typical audience that we would target our thriller at. Because they are a young audience as we were making it, it means that they will probably understand the narrative more as they will be able to understand the plot we were aiming to portray and relate to some of the characters and their relationships to each other in our thriller. As the two young people in the film look young we would estimate that they are 17 years or may be older. As our thriller is a 15 it would be fitting for that couple to watch it because they are within our target audience preference. As the two people are both male and female, both genders would be able to get separate views as to how our thriller would be in terms of how successful it is. We wanted to aim our thriller at both males and females so we could get that different perspective from both sides. Also we might have lost a larger audience if we chose to just focus on one gender. The race and nationality look to be what we are aiming our thriller towards, however we are open to a number of nationalities and races watching our thriller. We want to advertise our thriller to a specific audience however anyone can still watch it and question its success. The social economic class for our thriller is C1 (Nurse Professions), C2 (Electrician Professions) and E (Students). The couple both look to be students so they are a well suited audience for our thriller. These students could be classed as explorers. Explorers are a certain group of people who seeks discovery and are typically classed as unemployed. They typically have lots of energy and have individualism. Explorers value difference and adventure and are typically aimed at younger demographic people i.e. students.  Explorers are the type of individuals who want to experiment with life for example, taking part in dangerous sports, visiting different parts of the world, breaking the rules etc. Also, this could suggest that explorers could be the first to try new brands and they are seen as being more risk taking compared to adults. Therefore explorers would enjoy our thriller as they would be up for seeing our thriller maybe for the first time. Also they may prefer the suspense of our thriller opening and they may even like the fact we experimented with out filters and with costume and props. A students typical interests would be shopping to places such as ‘Primark’ and ‘Topman’, going to the cinema as the couple are in the picture, reading magazines such as ‘Heat’ and socialising with other people. They would also consume other medias such as TV shows such as ‘EastEnders’, watch films such as ‘Harry Potter’ and listen to music such as ‘Taylor Swift’. Students are the excitable and intriguing target audience that would be best for our thriller. This is also because as they are young they are open minded to the films they would want to see. They may also see horror films such as ‘Taken’ and romantic comedies such as ‘Just Go with It’. The horror genre is the closest genre the thriller genre relates to, therefore if students enjoy horrors they will most likely enjoy thrillers too.

We researched our audience by looking at our own preferences and then questioned other members of the public using a vox pop to address our target audience. We looked at demographics and psychographics to determine who would be the best audience to aim our thriller at and then structured our thriller around that knowledge. As we are students ourselves we could understand the needs of our chosen target audience and we had knowledge of our likes and dislikes so that we could implement the positives into our thriller. We found that our target audiences’ expectations were to enjoy action and tension in thriller movies. It became apparent that we had to include some kind of fight scene or killing in our thriller in order to fulfil the audience desires. It’s also important that we had a good soundtrack and/or sound effects to accompany our video as this would have added extra tension that the audience wanted to experience watching the opening. 

The BBFC (The British Board of Film Classification) would also have had a significant input towards our audience profile for our thriller. The BBFC protects children from unsuitable and even harmful content in films to give consumers information they might need about a particular film before deciding whether or not to view it, the BBFC examines and age rates films and videos before they are released. This independent scrutiny prior to release ensures the highest possible level of protection and empowerment. Our BBFC age rating would be 12 and 12A as we used moderate violence in our thriller when Becky was being killed. We did not use and strong language and we did not use any sexual behaviour either. This doesn’t impact our audience as much because it means that a wider variety of people would be able to watch our thriller. As we targeted out thriller at 15 and over it means that some younger views would also be able to see it. This would strengthen and widen our audience, meaning that we would get more responses and feedback of our thriller.