Evaluation question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product

0When deciding what our target audience would be we considered several things. One of which was the certificates of other films in our chosen genre. we felt a film rated 18 would have been too extreme. An example of a detective film rated 18 is  Se7en.

Although we thought an 18 was too extreme, we liked the freedom a higher certificate gave us as it means we were less censored. This I feel is the main reason we gave Desperation a 15 certificate. Because we thought a certificate of 12 was too censored and wouldn't allow us to create the feel we wanted.

  

Other example of detective films rated 15 are:

Lethal Weapon 4

And Shutter Island

Other than the censorship reasons we felt that we would get the best product by making it appeal to our generation. This was to avoid stereotypes of what an older audience would like for example. What also influenced our decision was what we found on the BBFC website.

   

When we were on the website we found lists of various genres and which audience they are most popular with. However there wasn't a specific chart for the detective genre, so we had to use the closest genre, crime/thriller. The BBFC graph told us that the crime/thriller films were most popular with women aged 35 and over. This influenced are certificate as it showed that aspects of our film would appeal to others as well as our chosen audience. Also as there was no specific data for our genre we felt a 15 certificate was the best fit.

                                         

I feel our film is more likely to be shown in a multiplex do to our choice of distributor and also the growing popularity of the detective genre thanks to the success of films like Sherlock Holmes and The Dark Knight.

Because of this I feel our audience would be more mainstream, with this in mind we had influences from mainstream films for our characters, but we wanted a grittier feel to the film so it's shot like an independent niche film. I feel this will help the film appeal to the niche detective genre.

What also helped us decide our target audience was we interviewed a member of our chosen target audience:

Name: Will Davidson

Age: 16

Favourite film genres: Sci-Fi and War.

Favourite film: Star Wars.

In the survey Will said he is a fan of the detective genre because he likes the action and the mystery.

When we asked him what makes a good detective film he said that the film needs action and a good balance of fast tempo scenes and slow scenes. However when we asked if we were marketing to the right audience he said that it would we better if we aim the film at a target audience of people aged 25+ instead of 15+.

Other than that Will said in a detective films he likes, enigma and cliff hangers. He also said that for our film opening we shouldn't over complicate with too much action or dialogue.

Overall I feel that Desperation appeals to our target audience and that our research in to our target audience helped us make a better film.