Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As a group we decided that our target audience should be males and females aged 15 35 and we gave our film a certificate rating of 15. We chose this target audience demographic as from our research into the audiences that watch horror movies the most we found out that it is mostly males aged 16 35. We wanted to appeal to this mass market audience as well as a specific individual audience of females aged 15 35 as our two main characters are females.

% 100 90 45+

The graph on the right produced, by the British film institution shows the share of cinema audiences in the UK by age and it is clear to see that the majority of cinema goers are aged between 15 -34 further justifying our target audience age range.

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

35-44

25-34

15-24

We are specifically targeting females to be the audience for our media product as our research has shown that males are more inclined to watch horror film because of the psychological thrill and adrenaline rush they receive from being scared and horrified. Females are less reluctant to watch some subgenres of horror such as slashers and human monster films as they are a lot more squeamish and horrified by blood and gore.

Therefore we are targeting females with our psychological thriller in the hope that they will be engaged and intrigued by the psychological storyline and not be put off by the horror genre as a whole.

Evaluation Question 5 How did you attract/address your target audience?

I conducted more research into what would attract young teenage girls, aged between 15 -18 at my secondary school, to go and see or watch a horror movie. They key statements that arose from my interviews were that females aged 15- 18 would : Be more inclined to watch a horror film around the festival of Halloween. Prefer to watch it with their friends for comfort. Would rather see a male victim than a female victim. Have a relatable character in the storyline and a fairly simple plot. Have a lack of blood, gore, guts and a graphic nature.

Taking this information into account we addressed our target audience in many ways to appeal to them through the psychological thriller form, female protagonist and physically graphic scenes being replaced by mentally challenging horror scenes.

We have addressed our target audience firstly by our two main characters being females and sharing a friendship and bond but within the horror genre, friendships are not always as we perceive them to be from an outsiders point of view. Due to the fact males are more inclined to watch horror films than women, our intention of having female lead roles is to attract more females who will be able to engage and relate to the characters making it a less obvious form of horror. Not only are our two main characters female, they are also within the age demographic of our target audience, Megan who plays Megan is 17 years old and Angharad who plays Lauren is 16 years old. By having the main characters at as similar age range it makes them even more relatable and therefore intriguing to our target audience.

We have attracted our target audience in other ways too by taking inspiration from and using key and successful horror conventions and iconography from existing media products to appeal to an overall fan of the horror genre. The pictures on the left show how we have taken inspiration from the films Halloween and Dont Be Afraid of the Dark to appeal to a wider target audience as these films are extremely successful horror films that have used iconic conventions such as The Final Girl and stalking to attract a viewing audience but were also targeted to as similar target audience to ours and pored to be successful in their marketing to and attracting of an audience. Therefore the conventions of horror that we have used and shown in our opening title sequence have helped us to attract a larger target audience, especially males who have watched more horror movies.