Question 4 & 5;

Who would be the audience for your media product?

And how we attracted and addressed the audience.
After producing our target audience questionnaire we targeted our film at young
adults and older teenagers, and gave our film a certificate rating of 15+. Although our
film can be viewed by both genders, as both the main character Douglas is a male
character the film may be more appealing towards the male segment of the
population. However we haven’t specified that it only for males, so we have including
two female character within our piece so also make it appealing for both
genders.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oNhcNxnhJ0

After looking at other similar media products that are

based around the same genre as our film, we were able
to get an insight and depth of understanding on how
they appeal to the target audience. After looking at the
‘Saw’ which is aimed at the same target audience as our
product, we could gain a better insight and
understanding on what to produce. In the opening of the
saw film there are two
male characters that are shown to be weak, however
later in the film females are brought into the
equation just like our film.

This photo is the woman talking about the

events that have happened to her within the film
saw, whereas the top photo is what happened to her
within the horror film. Showing a clip of her looking normal with her hair tied back
denotes her innocence and normality within the
character, however the other clip represented from
the photo above, is a low angle of the female
character trapped inside a head chain
being forced to watch a television.
This also connotes her innocence
and explains the storyline. By
showing the character in two different
states the audience can feel empathy
for the character as well as understand from her point of view.
When filming the pub scene where the killer and victim Fuschia meet
we incorporated the 180 degree rule. Using this shot allowed the audience
feel and think what the character was, as the audience was put in their position. This
attracts the audience as it makes them feel included in the action and the plot of the
storyline.

Age rating
After planning our target audience for our product commercially, I felt
that this film should have a aged 15 rating. This decision was mainly
made as my group all felt that some scenes within our film may be
unsuitable for a younger audience. I also feel that this is the best age
mainly because we have developed our film to suit an age group of 15 and
above so anyone younger may not understand our film, or find it as enjoyable as it
has not been aimed for their age group. We are aware that if our film was
commercially exposed then we would have to be aware that some people under the
age of 15 may be exposed to the film therefore we would have to make sure that it is
advertised properly such as after 9pm on the television and only advertised in
appropriate places such as DVD shops in the over 15 areas etc.

My group decided to choose our film for the ages of 15 years olds rather than for over
18’s mainly because this is a reasonable age rating as the older generation are more
unlikely to find it as interesting and believable compared to people of the age 15. Our
film does not involve any literally gore, or swearing. We felt that 15 was mainly
reasonable compared to other films such as ‘saw’ that demonstrate torture and literal
pain.

This is the DVD CD for the third film of Saw. As you can
see on the right hand side there is two circle age rating for
18+. This is because the film has been targeted at people
over the age of 18 and above, this is mainly down to the
contents of the film, including a large amount of torture,
gore and death. Like our film we are going to have this but
with 15. This is because unlike Saw our film does now have
torture or as much death or gore.

We will need to take our target audience into account when promoting our film.
Because we are aiming our film to the ages of 15 to 25, we would look at advertising
methods which are the most successful and which methods this age group are aware
of to promote our film, such as magazines, newspapers and certain Television
programmes etc. After doing a bit of research on our target audience we found out
that the internet and certain television programmes are the best for promoting our
film, such as music channels. We will need to later on do some more secondary
research to develop or advertising methods to promote the premier of our film.

I feel that using the internet to promote our film would be the best choice, such as
MySpace or face book. This is because in today’s society these are the most used sites
for people around the age of 15 to 18, and from 18 to 25. The internet would be
extremely relevant as the internet takes up a lot of young people’s lives in today’s
society. A film that is in connection to ours is the Saw film which was advertised
around the internet on popular search engines such as Google, and popular film
websites, or cinema websites such as The Odeon.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387564/ This film has been largely promoted using
the internet as you can see on this website.

Attracting the audience

We attracted mainly males towards our film, but overall we wanted to attract both
genders. Due to the fact that our main character is the antagonist within our film,
played by a masculine male figure we felt that males would be potentially take the
lead over females for viewing our film as they could relate to the antagonist within
the film. However we included two males so that both genders were equal within our
film and so that both genders could watch our film. We combined the horror with
secrecy so that both genders could relate to this genre.

After my group viewed the film we decided that we wanted our film to be left on a
cliff hanger leaving the audience wondering they killer’s next plans. As with most
gory horror films we hope to leave a huge impact on the audience leaving a feeling of
thrill and excitement after watching our film. We have also raised issues of a mental
state from our killer, showing things from his point of view, which may potentially
lead the audience wondering what is running through the killers mind and how it
may work within parts of the storyline. We have also used a young cast between the
ages of 16 to 17. This is mainly so that we can attract the audience towards our film
from recognising the actors within the play that are also of the similar age group. As
our film is based around a school we also felt that by attracting the 15 year old age of
people that still attend school it would be more interesting to them, as they would be
able to relate to it more. We also felt that the storyline of our film would be more
interesting for the younger generation to enjoy, mainly because it involves the
yearbook which makes it more realistic as it is based around a school and the young
cast that we used; both combined make it more believable. The extra diegetic sounds
also make it more interesting to the younger generation, due to the lower jumpy
tones of the audio sounds.