Who would be the audience for my media product?
What is the BBFC film classification for my film:
Myself and my group chose the BFFC film classification of 15. We awarded our media product with this classification and believed it to be appropriate because we feel that viewers younger than 15 may get slightly scared or unnerved by the violence and jump-scares that are involved in the film. The usage of creepy footage in our film opening is what we deem suited for 15 and over and we think that had our film opening been a full film, we would have incorporated rather a bit of violence that would fall into the 15 classification.
Click on the image here to go to the British Board of Film Classification website to find out what the different classifications consist of:
My films typical target audience:
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| Neil Evans = 16 Years of age |
Our film is aimed at people between the ages of 15-25, who currently are currently in studying or part-time jobs. Neil Evans here is a year 12 student who studies AS Music, AS Physics, AS English and AS Media Studies. He also has a part time job on a Saturday as a HMV assistant. We thought that this list of studies was appropriate to our film because our Protagonist is a Scientist and the idea of him enjoying DVDs links in with him studying Media.
His interests are anything energetic; mainly such things like rugby, while he enjoys reading books, listening to upbeat rock type music and collecting plenty of DVDs. His preferable film genres that he enjoys are such things as Horror, Thriller, Action, Mystery and Science Fiction, which show through in his favourite films. Van Helsing, Taken and Psyco are three of his altimate favourites.
He enjoys watching Van Helsing because of the whole greyscale at the beginning and the fact that it mixes in with the classical story of Dracula and Van Helsing. The thriller side of the film intrigues him as well as the SFX, camerawork and CGI of the creatures designed. This connects to our film because we also use Greyscale to bring out that old fashioned horror feel to the film and also we have used many SFX to build tension and camerawork to bring out the Protagonist and Antagonist's characters and to add to the suspense.
Taken is on Neil's favourites list because of the thrilling storyline and the thriller aspect of the film. He enjoys how the story is dragged out to build up the tension and also rather likes the twists that are incorporated into it. This real media product matches elements of my own film because of the twists that are in it and the built up suspense that Neil is attracted by.
Pearl and Dean data evidence:
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| The Expendables 3 Pearl and Dean data |
Above is evidence from the website Pearl & Dean to justify my claims that my film will attract our target audience of males aged between the ages 15-25. I picked this film to compare to our own film 'Shadowed' because The Expendables 3 has conventions of a thriller in it, the classification is age 15 and it is most suited for males (75%) between the ages 15-24 (44%). We used this comparison to make sure that we had picked the right sort of audience for the genre and type of our film.
Audience theories
On my next question (evaluation question 5) I will be discussing how myself and my group attracted/addressed our target audience by using certain thriller conventions, soundtracks and techniques.
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| The Audience Theories |
There are different theories about audiences. Gratification theory is where people watch something not for the entertainment but for whole reason to get something out of it; such things are porn films or really violent films could come under this theory. The audience theories such as the Hypodermic model sees the audience as passive viewers and that the message of the films or the message behind the texts are 'injected'.
Our film is put under the hypodermic model. This is because our thriller film is purely for entertainment purposes which is demonstrated through the jump-scares used and the deep, intense soundtrack. It is pretty much impossible to make yourself purposefully jump at a film - which prevents our film from falling into the gratification theory. Our film includes many thriller conventions and scary elements that allow our film to be entertaining and makes the audience enjoy it for the film itself and not their own particular reasons. (Gratification)
