Evaluation Question 4

What age category would find your production appealing?

The target audience for our media production is ages 16-34. We chose this age category due to the fact that they would be best suited to the story line as they would relate to character of the victims age therefore would add a sense of realism which could enhance the scariness.

What particular demographic would find your production appealing?

We feel that there are two main social groupings which our production would appeal to, these are: Innovators - who are people who are self-confident risk-takers, and who are seeking new and different things, as well as setting their own targets to achieve. And Contented conformers who are people who want to be 'normal', so therefore follow the herd, accepting of their circumstances, they are contented and comfortable in the security of their own making. We feel these types of people would find our production appealing because there is a sense of risk, therefore appealing to innovators. In addition there is the sense from the little girl that she just wants to play and the boy training who is normal which would interest the contented conformers

What other horror films would your audience watch?

We think that the types of films in the genre of horror that this age range would watch would be things like; Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Ring, Saw and Final destination Looking at these films we notice that they are mainly psychological horror. This suggests that this age category finds psychological horror most intriguing in which is why we targeted our film to of a similar age. We also calculated the assumption of this age category liking psychological horror from our survey in which we made for research purpose which also helped us to gain knowledge of who to target our film to.

IMBD user Ratings and audience preference on films

The website IMBD allows us to view user ratings of films and which age category commented and liked the film the most. We looked at the horror film The Ring on IMBD and concluded that those people who had commented on the mostly film mostly and viewed the highest ratings were the category of males aged 18-29 of scoring the film 7.1/10. This explains to us that the ring appealed to this age and gender category mostly in which could therefore mean that they would enjoy our film. Another film we looked at on IMBD was Paranormal Activity in which we noticed the same information on who the film appealed to mostly of males aged 18-29. This therefore suggests that this film which is also another psychological horror appealed mostly to the same age and gender category as The Ring. In conclusion looking at these films ratings on IMDB we notice that these types of horror films appeal to male 18-29 year olds, therefore this particular age category will also be the best categorised for our film opening due to having a similar story line of the idea of possession and a little girl being evil.

Did this have any influence over who you planned to target your audience to?
Yes it had an influence of who we planned to target our film to; this is because our film is a psychological horror in which the films we researched on IMBD were and targeted a particular audience of the gender male aged 18-29. We looked at films which our film could relate to and which we imitated. For example The Ring uses realistic sound effects like the static sound of the TV. We used a similar idea of the realistic sounding but of a phone dial. They both portray everyday uses which could have the effect of reality making it scarier to the audience by them being familiar with the objects which are being made into things to frighten them. Both our film and The Ring uses the characters of a final girl and the portrayal of an innocent child. This therefore explains our film is very similar to The Ring which would suggest our target audience would be the same, males ages 18-29.

What audience do you think you production would appeal to?

We want our film to appeal both males and females aged 16-34 however looking at statistics from other films similar to ours it would more likely appeal to males of the age 18-29. When researching and planning our film we created a questionnaire to gather feedback from the general public of what horror films they like and what the find scary. We sent the questionnaire was sent out to a range of ages from sixth form age starting from 16 ranging up to teacher age for example 35. From our questionnaire we learnt that the most appealing horror was psychological therefore fitting in with our film. It means and suggests a higher appeal and attraction from most people the genre of horror. However the results cannot be generalised to the rest of the population. Another thing we learnt from our questionnaire is of who our horror film would appeal to is by asking questions such as what other horror films you like to watch? This then enabled us to compare

our opening film towards these other films and using ideas from each such as the lighting and the use of characters such as a final girl used in The Ring, Scream and Saw. Therefore by our film using similar techniques we would hopefully attract the same audience as other psychological horror films which were concluded before that it was generally males aged 18-29. So in conclusion we want our production to appeal to those of similar category to The Ring and Paranormal Activity, this is due to the representations presented through characters, the plots and various media techniques used.

Can you classify your target audience another way other than age and gender?
We think our horror opening would range from C1, C2 and D on the social grading. These people are generally from the mainstream category therefore are people who tend to follow the norm. We feel that these types of people are more likely to relate to the characters therefore making it more realistic meaning it would enhance the scariness.

C1 C2 D

Supervisory or clerical junior, lower middle Junior manager, student, class clerical/office workers, supervisors Skilled manual workers, skilled working class Foreman, agricultural worker, plumber, brick layer Semi and unskilled manual workers, Manual worker, shop worker, working class fisherman, apprentices

Looking at Maslows hierarchy of needs we would categorise the types of people who would be targeted to our film of the following: Need to know and understand Explains the thoughts that humans have to understand the world around them. We think this because throughout our film we use the innocent little girl who is in fact evil therefore this can be related to real life by not judging a book on someones appearance and assuming all little girls are sweet and innocent. And Transcendence Surpassing others, lying beyond the ordinary range of perception. We chose this category because we use the image of an innocent little girl which would be considered ordinary we then change this perception by giving her an unordinary perception of having power and being evil.