TARGET AUDIENCE

The specific target audiences within a film or media product are crucial to the in the whole film making process, especially in setting up the structure and conventions of your product. Selecting and targeting specific audiences, mostly based on gender and age, is instrumental in setting up audiences' expectations which is crucial to generating audiences and making money. The specific type of audience selected is crucial when forming the narrative, mise-en-scene, characters and most specifically the casting process. 

Regarding the influence target audience has over the casting experience, certain conventions such as the male gaze have a huge influence over the decisions of casting directors and how they want to attract certain audiences through either the looks or even reputation of specific actors. Marketing is another huge influence that the target audience has over the film making process as it is the process of creating awareness and demand for a product and that in fact is the dictating element. The age rating of target audiences is dictated not only by the violent or sexual implications but also the cultural norm within the area and how those changes from region to region, which changes with the topics within a film. This enables film makers to dictate their products also on the intended area and culture.  

When looking into our own target audiences for our opening sequences, we not only looked at the genre and conventions that we explore but we also compared the target audiences of comparable products in order to decipher who are targeted audiences are.

The two categories are gender and age; firstly, looking into the genre and conventions of our concept, we know instantly that the age rating will be looking at age 15 and over due to the graphic detailing and the violent nature of the sequence. The hybrid genre, following conventions of an action thriller is much more attractive to broad older, male orientated audiences. The gender differences are an element which we have investigated further, deducing that there are both elements within the narrative that attract stereotypically male and female audiences; for example, the use of the strong, female protagonist is seen as a compelling attribution in targeting female audiences. Yet the gore and the violent, thrilling element is seen as stereotypically targeting male dominated audiences. 

To look into this further, we looked at products that share the same genre, conventions and even narrative. Using IMDb, and the example of Same Levinson's, ‘Assassination Nation’, that shares comparable traits with our own sequence, shows the demographic is widely male oriented and is rated a 15.

Another example being ‘The Hunt’, also shows its audience is also widely male attracted. Whilst these examples are influential in investigating our own target audience, you also must question the demographic of the IMDb website itself being more male orientated itself.  To conclude, we have decided upon rating our opening sequence an age rating 15, whilst targeting males, especially from the ages 20-25, with a secondary audience of young females. Due to the political aspect of the narrative being a dig at the social patriarchy within our society, the older generations would be more knowledgeable of these conditions. Whilst the horror thriller hybrid genre and the conventions it follows, stereotypically attracts younger audiences that are more inclined to its normalised extreme nature.