Our Target Audience 2

I did an updated and more developed post on the target audience for our slasher film, following on from Sophie's post on target audience. 

For our film, we knew that we had to stick to a very specific and typical target audience. This is because the slasher genre has often been called an example of 'genre purism' essentially, this means that the conventions of the genre have been in place so long, and are so specific, that attempting to deviate too far from tradition or changing these conventions can result in a films financial failure. This leads onto how our film opening engaged with our audience/audiences, which I will be covering later on.






Typically, the target audience
for horror/slasher films is 15-25 years old. Although quite a few of these films have an age rating of 18, 15 year olds still have access to films online or on DVD, making it difficult to enforce these age ratings.


Here is the BBFC page for Saw, which shows the rating and explains why it was given.

So, deciding the age of our target was very straightforward, as we have the same target audience of the majority of slasher films that exist.



I found some statistics based around the ages and genders of horror movies.
As can be seen, the majority of horror film viewers are between the ages of 18 and 24.

To finish, the target audience of our film would be 15-24, and the secondary audience being 26-35.

Primary and secondary target audience

The primary audience is the audience that the film is primarily target at, so the main people who will watch the film, for example. When creating a film, the target audience is something extremely important to consider as failing to appeal to the target audience could result in the failure of the film.

The secondary audience are people who wouldn't go and watch a film by choice, but would perhaps be influenced by the primary audience. To explain, a young teenager who really wants to see a film (and would be the primary audience) could bring someone with them, a parent or a friend for example to watch it with them, making them the secondary audience.

So for our film, due to the fact that the second largest percentage of viewers of horror is 25-34, we decided that this would be our secondary audience.

Audience Gender

As seen in the pie chart, more men than women watch horror films. 

This is because they can interact or relate better to the characters on screen, and the main killer is normally a man.

Women are less attracted to horror, for reasons such as the negative portrayal of women in such films.

Character types such as the final girl are stereotypical and very negative.

However, including romance or aspects of romance in horror/slasher films also attracts women to the film, and making horror films good 'date films'; the romance aspects appeal to the women and the gory/horror aspects to the men.

Therefore, our primary target audience is men as they view horror more than women.

On the other hand, we actually wanted our film to appeal more to women than the average slasher movie, by representing our main character differently and ensuring that it would pass the Bechdel test. (I expanded further on this on another blog post.)

SR: Our Target Audience

The genre for our movie is horror/slasher. I did a post, where I was outlining and explaining what the typical conventions of the slasher genre were. 

Before doing this post, I decided to do some research to find out who our target audience and primary audience would be. We wanted to create a movie that appealed to both males and females. The typical hybrid genre ROM-COM is one of the main genres that the subsidiaryWorking Title is creating. However, ROM-COM's such as Love Actually or Bridget Jones Diary appeal more to the female audience because of the romance genre. It does on the other hand also appeal to some male audience because there is considered to be comedy in it. 
When I then did this research, I decided to look for the common types of movies that the general public enjoy watching and found these statistics from the British Film Institute from 2012, which show that the number of males and females below 35, that watch the horror genre is around the same.

Due to this, we came to the conclusion that our main target audience, were males and females from the age rate of 15 to 24 and that our secondary audience would be from the age of 24 to 35. Since, it is also unlikely that a slasher genre gets an age rate under 15, if there are violent scenes and sexual assault, we thought that 15 and above would be the correct age. 

Bronwen and I intend to do questionnaires later on where we will ask the audience what they think of our basic idea and what they would like us to change etc. 

Applying Uses And Gratifications Theory To Bridget Jones's Baby

 

I am going to look at the teaser trailer for the upcoming Working Title production, Bridget Jones's Baby and apply Dennis McQuail's Uses And Gratifications theory to it.  

 

Diversion/Escapism:

I think that in this teaser trailer, one scene that offers a way of escape for the audience is that of the music festival. You can see that Bridget is having a good time and enjoying herself, denoted by facial expression/body language, (she's smiling, throwing her arms up and is being carried by the crowd) Also, the costume and colours of costume plays a large part. Bridget's outfit is very casual and loose, which again represents the fact that she is enjoying herself, and as she is the central protagonist, allows the viewer to feel the same. The colours of hers and the rest of the crowd's outfits are bright which connote fun and enjoyment.

Seeing her having fun, surrounded by a large crowd and music creates the feeling that the audience member is there with her, and they are able to forget about personal life/issues.

The trailer is also quite comedic (scene where she falls in the mud) therefore the audience is able to relax and laugh along to the film, allowing escapism.      

  

Personal Relationship:

This film, and the teaser trailer, offers a talking point. For example, one way that people could discuss this film or the trailer is through social media platforms, people could share images of the trailer or poster, opening a discussion in the comments. Also, the demographic of the audience who have seen the first two films in the series would be able to discuss the first two films and talk about this one in terms of how it will compare to the others.  

This teaser trailer opens up a lot of discussion around the film, which viewers could discuss with friends or family (e.g. what is the plot of the film? how will it end?) But also, it offers quite a large amount of change in Bridget's character (she seems more sophisticated at the beginning) but also in the actress. The franchising is also very important, as it is all though an old friend is back (for those who have seen the first two films) and this creates a lot of excitement especially as a lot of the audience have known this character for quite a considerate amount of time, and this would create a talking point among them.

 

In the first shot in which we see Bridget, she looks very different, she looks elegant and sophisticated and she looks changed. This is something that the audience would want to be informed about as it has been quite a long time since the first couple of films have come out and they would like to see if her character has changed.

 

Personal Identity:

One way in which some of the audience could largely relate to Bridget's character is through her displays of clumsiness. This is something that probably a lot of the audience could relate to, especially if they are clumsy themselves or have had similar experiences. However, this is also a national stereotype of the English being slightly clumsy, and bumbling, which the English demographic might not particularly link to as its not such a positive image. However, this is something that the non-English audience would relate to and probably be amused by.

Another way in which the audience could relate to the film/ trailer, which would make them want to go see it, is through the setting. The location is very clearly London, this is made recognizable through an establishing shot. The British part of the audience, especially those living in London would relate to the setting.

Another point would be that as there has been a large time gap between this film and the others, the audience would have grown up with her and perhaps are now experiencing similar situations to her.

There is actually an issue in relating to a younger female audience however, as Bridget is now in her 40s, which means that they would not easily identify with her character as they haven't had the experiences that she's going through.

 

Surveillance

By watching this text, you will partially be more informed as to what Bridget's character is like now, also the scene where she is wearing the blue dress, allows the audience to be more informed in what is fashionable.

 An explanation of the Theory:

Audience Feedback 1: Questionnaire Results

After collecting back the questionnaires that we handed out, I have collected the results:

We tried to ask mainly people from our target audience, however, we also asked people outside the target audience because they are also relevant as they fit into our secondary audience.

For question 4, I gave a very brief plot description and asked whether or not the film interested them and why/why not.

Overall, 9 out of 16 people liked our idea.

Positive points said about our film opening idea:

• An interesting idea, especially with the flash forwards.
• Goes with the convention of horror movies with the mask
• The anticipation to know who is under the mask
• Sounds like it could be fun
• Mysterious
• Interesting

Things we could improve:

• The bones hanging from the ceiling, no bones would be more effective as it leaves it more mysterious
• "Sounds a bit stereotypical and therefore doesn't really stand out from the others. I would see it but I wouldn't really promote it with other people because it sounds a bit generic."
• Too much is revealed in the first scene.
• Too gory for those who aren't that into horror.

Question 5 asked people to suggest a name for our movie. These are the titles that people came up with:

• Listen To Me
• The Killer's Room
• Lights Out
• The Kidnapper
• Creepy Hollow
• The Man in the Mask
• Trapped
• That Night
• Him
• Torture
• Creepy Basement
• Masked
• Locked in with Death
• Trapped by Death
• The Cellar
• The Butcher
• The Reflection
• Not My Face
• Mirrored Mask
• Trapped

We also found that 8 out of 13 people in our primary target audience (15-35) enjoy horror films.

SR: The semiotic analysis of our idea

 Audiences:

Below you can see a link to an article from box office, that shows which audience went to watch the premier of "The Purge" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". You will see that the audience was mainly young adults under 25. And there were around 50%-60% of women and 40-50% males.

http://www.thewrap.com/box-office-how-horror-films-conjuring-win-scaring-young-women-104901/

When reading this article you quickly ask yourself: Why are so many women going to watch a horror movie? You would mainly consider a horror movie to be addressed to a male audience. A very simple explanation for this is that the main protagonist in most horror movies is a woman.

Our film opening will also be with a female main protagonist. Moreover, we looked at bbfc and looked at the rating system. Our film opening would be most likely to be rated at 15. If clicking the link below, you will see that the age rate of 15+ is allowed to include any of the following:

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language
• Portrays of sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Nudity 
• Scenes of violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour 
• Drug taking 

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

Due to this age rate our primary audience would be young adults aged between 15 and 25.
Our secondary audience would be the people interested in the horror genre.


Genres:

When watching a movie there is always a main genre e.g. horror in the movie "Scary Movie".
However, there are also other genres that are or can be linked to it. One genre that could for example be linked to "Scary Movie" and also our film opening, is the slasher genre. In this genre, there is a main killer who is nearly always trying to rape or kill young women. One important signifier for the slasher genre, is that the killer will kill the victim with a knife. The knife is phallic, which means that it is a symbol for a sexual assault towards the victim. The term phallic, comes from Freud's psychosexual analysis of the 5 psychosexual stages. (phallic stage is the 3rd stage). It can therefore also be applied to media.

Representation:

For our stereotypes in our film opening, we have Olivia (played by Bronwen), who is portrayed as a very girly girl, who only cares about her friends, make-up and hair. Whereas our killer (played by Jonathan), is a stereotypical killer, where you don't see the face, he is wearing a mask and wants to kill Olivia with a knife.
We chose not to do any counter stereotypes, because horror is a very common genre and these two character's are stereotypes, which are considered to be the normative in society.