Question 4

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The core audience for our film would be people in their late ‘teens, and, following the theory of Blumler and Katz, they would be likely to choose to watch our film as a means of diversion – it would attract the same sort of audience as films such as Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (2007), Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night (2008), and Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007). The genre of horror in its broadest sense encapsulates our film’s genre, and our audience feedback showed us that it is a very popular genre, with 14 out of 20 people of our core target audience stating it as their favourite genre.
In fact, due to the genre of our film, age becomes almost irrelevant; as the characters are in their late teens, it will particularly attract an audience of the same age and those slightly younger, who hold aspirations to their (slightly) elders, but the genre has such a massive fanbase in itself that there is already a large amount of interest generated from that group. This is one of the reasons it is so important to get the balance between repetition and difference just right, and to create the right narrative image. We would not have as high a budget as Hollywood blockbusters would, and so would not be able to focus a great deal on ostentatious marketing, but would provide enough information in posters, trailers, and for word-of-mouth for the genre signifiers to be clear, but leaving narrative enigma. This then acts as a promise that the film will answer questions raised by the film’s publicity. Films such as the Saw (James Wan, 2004) series have such a strong branding and narrative image that they need very little information on posters – they can tell of a new film in the series, but without saying what will happen, acting as a teaser, enticing their fanbase to see the film even more.
We thought that we targeted both males and females quite well, as the females would be able to relate to the aspects of beauty and feelings of jealousy, as well as being interested by the story; the heterosexual males would be interested because of the plethora of beautiful girls that would be in it, and they would be able to relate to male characters, and as a horror/thriller, it would have a fitting amount of gore. However, our opening does show the film as being very feminine - there are two female characters, no mention of men, and contains very feminine themes. This would bring even greater appeal to women, particularly those who feel under-represented.
With a teen audience, it’s also likely that if two people in a relationship may go to see a film together, even if just one wants to go, so the boy/girlfriend of someone in the core audience help to make up the secondary audience. Similarly, parents accompanying their sons or daughters to the cinema are part of the secondary audience.