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

     

The audience for our media movie is quite large, as this genre would appeal to a wide variety of people. Our general age range would be anybody aged 15 and above as our movie may not be suitable for viewers under this age as it contains offensive weapons (gun) and some violence. Our audience aim is also at both genders as we feel that both could enjoy this movie however overall it may appeal to a greater male audience than female audience as the trend for this type of movie tends to lean more towards the male gender because they prefer the conventions of the genre.

This is an image of our typical audience member along with the details of their interests and therefore how that would affect whether they would watch our film or not.

 

We used various methods to research our audience. The main way that we collected some information was by our audience questionnaires. We handed these out to various groups of people in order to get a flavour for what different age groups and genders prefer in terms of genre of film and what they like in that genre. By making sure that we handed these to as many different types of people as possible it made sure that we got the broadest possible range of views and therefore helped to decide on ideas for our film. As well as the questionnaires we used the class pitch feedback where we gathered some useful tips on how to improve our ideas and develop them further. We also did a lot of research into thrillers beforehand which helped us to see what people liked and what they thought needs to be included to make something into a good and decent thriller film.

Audience research is really important during planning as it allows the production of the film to fit around the audience. This means that the film can be made more interesting for the target audience and would therefore be more likely to be successful. We found out many things from the research that we carried out including which sub-genre of the thriller genre we should use. We narrowed this down to three from the questionnaires, these were a psychological thriller, spy thriller and gangster thriller and then we narrowed that down to the gangster thriller after the pitch feedback. From the other research we carried out we found out what props would be appropriate and the kind of location/setting that would be best for the gangster thriller that we had chosen to do. We also found out that the lighting needed to be quite concealing although not so dark that things weren’t clear. Mystery, excitement and tension also needed to be included according to the research we carried out.

The BBFC age rating that our film would have to have would be a 15. This is because it contains some moderate violence and some use of weapons. Because this is not excessive use and there is no physical footage of anybody being killed the age rating doesn’t have to be increased to 18. The age rating doesn’t affect the film too much as the target audience was for people of the age 15 and above anyway.