Who would be the audience for your media product?
From our research and planning, we were able to establish that the most predominant age group our opening two minutes should be aimed at was 15-24. This was because this age group tends to have the largest variety of tastes meaning that it would be likely to have a wide appeal, and similarly, because we discovered that this target audience enjoy engaging films which slowly increase the suspense. As this is what we aimed to produce, we thought it would be best to use that age group for our target audience as it would realistically have the highest chance of being successful. As we found, teenagers/young adults also tend to enjoy films which have a relative amount of sophistication, and watch films of high regard. Usually, it is the actors which capture their attention before the plot line, so when planning our film, we decided to follow the stereotypes as best we could and use two main actors, rather than lots of equally important actors. Due to our limited sources, we were unfortunately unable to borrow high brow actors and actresses for our film, so we decided to try and just follow the pattern of successful, well reviewed films. By doing this, we decided that using two main actors would suggest that the plot of the film would be successful. We based our decision on the latest box office success, Gravity 2013 which received 7 out of its 10 Academy Nominations despite only using two infamous actors – Sandra Bullock and George Clooney throughout the entire film. We thought that using many actors would take away from the enigmas we planned to use as it may be difficult to keep track, as well as suggesting that the film was less sophisticated because typically, the more actors, the lower the success of the cast which is why more, less successful actors are used in an attempt to appeal to a wider target audience. As we have learnt from experience and research, the more attractive the cast, the smaller the cast is as they attract a wide enough target audience for the film to be a success on their own.
From our research, using the films Taken and Intrusion we also were able to establish that our chosen genres, crime, thriller and action were slightly more popular with males, however not as much as we'd expected. The viewers of Taken 2 were 54% male and 46% female, and surprisingly, Inception was equal with the viewers consisting of 50% female and 50% male. Using this information, we decided to aim our film towards both males and females by using a female protagonist in which males would be attracted to but females would also be able to relate to. Aiming our film towards both genders created a wider target audience, and because the 15-24 age bracket has the most amount of disposable money, we also thought they would be a beneficial target audience as it would allow the film to have a higher budget, in turn appealing to the target audience even more as it would hopefully create a more successful, sophisticated film. Despite this, we are well aware that there are downfalls to our chosen target audience. Due to the relatively young age, they typically have other, larger commitments such as work or school, meaning they would have less free time than an older target audience, and so there is a chance the film would receive lower viewings. Although this is something we took into consideration, we found that the majority of successful box office hits have a young target audience such as ours, meaning that they still manage to find time to go to the cinema. Similarly, as a lot of films are targeted at the same age group, there is a chance that the film could go unnoticed if other attractive films were released at the same time, making it very competitive. To target this audience successfully, we would have to build up a hype for the film, which would involve making sure that the trailers and posters are shared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In this age group many are influenced by their friend's recommendations, so it is vital that we employ a viral marketing campaign similar to 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey', which successfully exploited teenage usage of Facebook and Youtube.
Although young men remain one of the lightest viewing audiences, they are still one of the most profitable. Their viewing is typically centred around their interests and daily schedules, however they are often easily influenced by female partners or friends. Despite this not being entirely relative, we found that this group are more likely to watch films post-pub than any other, where comedies and general entertainment feature highly as a relatively light viewing which suits the mood perfectly. We thought about this a lot when choosing our target audience, however we decided that even though one of their most popular genres was almost opposite to ours was not a major concern. Although it may be true that the comedy genre is the most popular amongst men on weeknights, we did not intend to release our film at this sort of time. Due to the young age of our target audience, we would release our film at a weekend as we believe it would receive the highest viewings. This means that young men would still be able to enjoy late night weekday comedy viewings, but also still have time to be able to watch the sophisticated, high brow film (we we hoped to produce) at the cinema, slightly reducing the competition. Alternatively, the expected genre viewing stereotypes went against what we found from our research, shown through our surprise when the target audience for stereotypically male dominated genres such as thriller and action were almost equal between men and women. Young women are big consumers of media on the whole, making them a suitable target audience for our film. Compared to men of the same age group, women have a much broader variety of tastes, with nearly half falling into the medium to heavy viewer categories which increased the chance of our film being a success within both genders. Our expectations, based on the stereotypes of the genders were proved wrong by many of the statistics, which allowed us to aim our film towards both genders rather than just males, which we had initially planned to do.
Overall, I think our film would appeal to the 15-24 male and female target audience in the way that we intended. Through the slow build up to the film with little given away about the characters, tension and suspense was created which is an aspect this age group in known to enjoy. Similarly, I think our film would work well with this target audience because it helps to counter the work in their everyday life be it from school or work as it provides a sense of escapism, which is also something which would appeal to them, making it a selling point in our film. Although we did not want to base our opening scene around a period drama or classic novel because of our lack of experience and resources, it works to our, and our target audience’s advantage as I do not feel like this would appeal or be a selling point as it may seem too realistic, causing them to relate it back to work. As mentioned previously, one problem with our film is that it could be lost amongst other, more popular releases and so we would need to make sure that within the marketing we focus on positive reviews and a good reception to make sure I gains the attention needed to make it successful. Although I think our film would be appealing to our target audience, I believe that fast paced action sequences or even casual light-hearted comedies may be slightly more successful. From our research and planning we were aware of this however decided against this due to our inexperience and so believed we would be unable to produce a film which would be better quality than this one. To ensure the success of our film against other competitive genres such as comedy or action, we would need to take advantage of the social networking sites which are popular amongst our target audience to advertise our film. Despite this, I do believe that we provided some of the elements that this demographic would want in a film, and with our limited knowledge I am quite pleased with what we produced.
From our research, using the films Taken and Intrusion we also were able to establish that our chosen genres, crime, thriller and action were slightly more popular with males, however not as much as we'd expected. The viewers of Taken 2 were 54% male and 46% female, and surprisingly, Inception was equal with the viewers consisting of 50% female and 50% male. Using this information, we decided to aim our film towards both males and females by using a female protagonist in which males would be attracted to but females would also be able to relate to. Aiming our film towards both genders created a wider target audience, and because the 15-24 age bracket has the most amount of disposable money, we also thought they would be a beneficial target audience as it would allow the film to have a higher budget, in turn appealing to the target audience even more as it would hopefully create a more successful, sophisticated film. Despite this, we are well aware that there are downfalls to our chosen target audience. Due to the relatively young age, they typically have other, larger commitments such as work or school, meaning they would have less free time than an older target audience, and so there is a chance the film would receive lower viewings. Although this is something we took into consideration, we found that the majority of successful box office hits have a young target audience such as ours, meaning that they still manage to find time to go to the cinema. Similarly, as a lot of films are targeted at the same age group, there is a chance that the film could go unnoticed if other attractive films were released at the same time, making it very competitive. To target this audience successfully, we would have to build up a hype for the film, which would involve making sure that the trailers and posters are shared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In this age group many are influenced by their friend's recommendations, so it is vital that we employ a viral marketing campaign similar to 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey', which successfully exploited teenage usage of Facebook and Youtube.
Although young men remain one of the lightest viewing audiences, they are still one of the most profitable. Their viewing is typically centred around their interests and daily schedules, however they are often easily influenced by female partners or friends. Despite this not being entirely relative, we found that this group are more likely to watch films post-pub than any other, where comedies and general entertainment feature highly as a relatively light viewing which suits the mood perfectly. We thought about this a lot when choosing our target audience, however we decided that even though one of their most popular genres was almost opposite to ours was not a major concern. Although it may be true that the comedy genre is the most popular amongst men on weeknights, we did not intend to release our film at this sort of time. Due to the young age of our target audience, we would release our film at a weekend as we believe it would receive the highest viewings. This means that young men would still be able to enjoy late night weekday comedy viewings, but also still have time to be able to watch the sophisticated, high brow film (we we hoped to produce) at the cinema, slightly reducing the competition. Alternatively, the expected genre viewing stereotypes went against what we found from our research, shown through our surprise when the target audience for stereotypically male dominated genres such as thriller and action were almost equal between men and women. Young women are big consumers of media on the whole, making them a suitable target audience for our film. Compared to men of the same age group, women have a much broader variety of tastes, with nearly half falling into the medium to heavy viewer categories which increased the chance of our film being a success within both genders. Our expectations, based on the stereotypes of the genders were proved wrong by many of the statistics, which allowed us to aim our film towards both genders rather than just males, which we had initially planned to do.
Overall, I think our film would appeal to the 15-24 male and female target audience in the way that we intended. Through the slow build up to the film with little given away about the characters, tension and suspense was created which is an aspect this age group in known to enjoy. Similarly, I think our film would work well with this target audience because it helps to counter the work in their everyday life be it from school or work as it provides a sense of escapism, which is also something which would appeal to them, making it a selling point in our film. Although we did not want to base our opening scene around a period drama or classic novel because of our lack of experience and resources, it works to our, and our target audience’s advantage as I do not feel like this would appeal or be a selling point as it may seem too realistic, causing them to relate it back to work. As mentioned previously, one problem with our film is that it could be lost amongst other, more popular releases and so we would need to make sure that within the marketing we focus on positive reviews and a good reception to make sure I gains the attention needed to make it successful. Although I think our film would be appealing to our target audience, I believe that fast paced action sequences or even casual light-hearted comedies may be slightly more successful. From our research and planning we were aware of this however decided against this due to our inexperience and so believed we would be unable to produce a film which would be better quality than this one. To ensure the success of our film against other competitive genres such as comedy or action, we would need to take advantage of the social networking sites which are popular amongst our target audience to advertise our film. Despite this, I do believe that we provided some of the elements that this demographic would want in a film, and with our limited knowledge I am quite pleased with what we produced.
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