Target Audience Research

 All films need a target audience to watch them, because not every person is interested in the same things. Film companies tend to generalise people, in order to pitch their film for the right people to watch. For example, not a lot of elderly people would want to watch a cartoon, children, however, would like to watch cartoons. Because of this we needed to do some research into target audiences for the crime/thriller genre.

A target audience is normally defined primarily by gender and age range. However, the can define it also by race, special interests, rural or urban.

These are the statistics that we discovered from our primary research:

70% of crime/thriller viewers are between the ages of 15 and 30
65% of crime/thriller viewers are male
50% do not enjoy a romantic sub-plot

We also decided to use audience profile data from websites online for 3 films which are similar to ours, to see the target audiences they received, so we can make our film appropriate for those people. Here are the results I received.

1. Gone Girl

The audience profile for Gone is largely female, and mainly within the age range of 15 to 34, but does include a significant amount of people aged 35+, so it has a large variety for age range.

2. Now You See Me

The audience profile for Now You See Me is equal male and female viewings. The main portion of people watching are from the ages of 15-34, however there are quite a few who are 35+ and a small percentage who are 7 to 11. 

3. The Equalizer

The audience profile for The Equalizer is mainly male viewings. The same as the other two, the main age range is 15 to 34, with a small percentage of the viewings being aged 35+.

Most thriller films tend to be 18+ due to the violence that is in them, so I would probably need to generalise my audience as mainly being 18+, however some people will watch it younger because they can easily watch it online, or if their parents buy the DVD they can watch it through that. However, I think my opening would class as a 15, because it has strong violence. If you go to http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15 to justify my decision, and my film would probably have most of the categories on the list, but nothing above that. The categories are:

•   strong violence
•  frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
•   portrayals of 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

I do however think that these kind of films can be split equally for both genders, if I were to add a love interest to my film, for example, a lot more women would probably want to watch it, stereotypically. Therefore I think my target audience is anyone over the age of 15 and of either gender.