Target Audience

Now that we have our film finally commissioned we need to just run over our Target Audience and how we come to choose it and why. We also have to analyse why it would be to the specific chosen audience and what rating the film would be given according to the BBFC rating system. We will also make close comparisons to real media products of the same elements similar to ours.

Target Audience - 15 - 45 year olds

Why have we chosen this age range?

We have made it so the audience is quite vast as short films tend to have a more open range of audiences for their films. However what made us comes to this conclusion was the research into existing media products and their audience for their films. We based the research on how similar the genre is, the costume, location, characters etc. are as then we would see how films similar to ours have an audience in which they are most likely to come and see the type of film that is similar to ours. Below you can see the research we took to find these statistics, which led us to choosing our target audience from the Pearl and Dean Website which offers film audience statistics:

FRANK - 2014























Genre: Comedy
BBFC Rating: 15
Release Date: 09/05/2014
Why: Frank seems to be similar in the idea that he wears a mask  whilst there are others around him who treat him normally. The same type of principle is applied in our film too so it is interesting to see how audiences react to a character with something as unusual as a mask.

The Pearl and Dean website research on the film, Frank with the statistics for audiences that watched the film.

As you can see below the main percentage was an audience of 15 - 24 year olds then surprisingly the next age gap, the 25 - 34 year olds is much lower and what is even more interesting is that the next age gap is higher again being an audience of 35 - 44 year olds so this made it clear that it is much more appealing to audiences in a vast amount across the ages which helped give an idea to how this sort of film is received by audiences which would be similar to ours.

THE WAY WAY BACK - 2013






















Genre: Comedy, Drama
BBFC Rating: PG
Release Date: 30/08/2013
Why: The story centres around a teenage boy who is having trouble and issues, he feels alone and I want to focus on the idea that like our film, it is centered on not a typical teenage boy and I want to see how audience respond to that aspect.

The research from the Pearl and Dean website for the film The Way Way Back showing the audience statistics.

It is unusual as we found that the highest percentage was that of an audience of 45+, so for a film about a teenager, this is quite shocking and subverts the expectations, also the rating may be a PG but no one under 15 watched it, which makes me think that stories like this are more appealing to older audiences. If I combined the percentage of all the audience members from 15 - 44 year olds it would be a percentage of 64%, which is why I decided to again vary out the audiences.

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN - 2004

Genre: Comedy, Drama
BBFC Rating: PG
Release Date: 13/02/2004
Why: What I want to focus on with this film is the setting and the vast variety of teenage characters. Like our film we will set many scenes in the house getting ready, school, and social activities with friends. This film represents all of these factors and also the idea of there being a vast amount of teenagers represented as well, so I wanted to see the audience reaction to this film. 

Here is the audience research gained from the Pearl and Dean website for the film Cheaper By The Dozen.

As you can see below the main audiences were the 15-24 year olds which strikes right in our target audience and the percentages are also high for the rest of the ages up to the age of 44. I can see that it is quite popular in the lower ages but I would put this down to the idea of because it's a family film and with all of the 15 - 44 year olds combined you can see the interest is still much stronger towards the older audience.

As you can see the research proved valuable as it helped gain an understanding of what audiences like to watch specifically referring to the key aspects of our film such as characters, costume, setting etc. And by comparing our film to real media products it helped us find a firm audience in which we are confident our film will appeal to.

Rating for our film
Moving on to the rating side of it as we now have a target audience. We want to make our film a rating of...

BBFC - Rating of 15
We have done this according to the BBFC, British Board of Film Classification, as this is the proper guideline used to put ratings on to cinema releases or DVDs.

What does it mean?
No-one under 15 is allowed to see a 15 film at the cinema or buy/rent a 15 rated video. Not suitable for children under 15 years of age.
What might I see in a 15 rated film?

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language (e.g. f***)
• Portrayals sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Sexual nudity
• Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour
• Drug Taking

Why have we chosen this rating?
We have chosen this as we are wanting to use strong language and the target audience fits into the rating of the film too. It also shows some grown up things that smaller audiences wouldn't understand such as maybe the references to them in the bed or social activities that teenagers would engage in unlike younger audience members. The younger audience would not understand our film as much and from the target audience research we have gathered, they wouldn't be all that interested either in comparison to the older audiences.

Target Audience Profile

Name: Gabrielle Raven
Age: 18
Education: Gabrielle is in her last year at sixth form, studying Drama, English and Psychology. She is predicted with high grades and is looking at going to Manchester University.
Lives: Walsall, West Midlands
Lifestyle: She lives at home with her parents, but hopes to live independently when she goes to university. Gabrielle has a part time job at Asda and likes to spend her weekends going out with her friends or going to the cinemas. She also likes read books and watch movies/TV shows on Netflix as well as researching into behavioural studies of the mind as she has a passion of Psychology. Her favourite genre of film is Fantasy/Drama
Film History: She goes to the cinemas with her friends twice a month, or whenever she sees a film that she really wants to go and see. Her favourite film is 'Donnie Darko' and the latest film that she watched is 'The Hobbit'.

So now we have the target audience and rating established we have a clear view on who we are aiming our film towards, now we can start to organise roles and deadlines for our Short Film. The next post will focus on our schedule for the next few months as we work to complete the film.