TARGET AUDIENCE

A target audience is the particular group in which a products such as film or TV are aimed at.

An audience is a receiver of any media. Media is always produced with an audience in mind. Companies etc tailor the content that put out in order to attract a certain type of person. target audiences tend to be that of large/ general social groups such as 'children under 10', 'male teens' or 'adult females'. Most comglomerates tend to make movies that are more commercial (reaching a larger target audience) in order to produce more produce more profit. On the other hand, independent/ lower budget films have a more specific target audience (niesh market) as they tackle more obscure themes ion their films.

Whiplash (2014) is an independent movie with what is considered to be a quite low budget of $3.3 million. It performed very well in the box office making $49 million. it is the story of a young jazz drummer, Andrew Neiman who aspires to rise to the top of an elite music conservatory. However to do this he must put up with an very intense and some what abusive teacher Terence Fletcher. This is considered relatively obscure plot that wouldn't typically be used for a film with the main aim of profit. this movie doesn't appear to have a clear target audience as it seems to target small groups within bigger general groups e.g. teenage boys with an interest in the arts

The Fast and Furious franchise on the other hand was clearly made for box office success. You can see that 7 movies have been make due to the subsequent success of the previous movies. They are clearly aimed at the males and young people (10- 25) in general and to to the huge budget (fast and furious 7 being $190 million) means a lot more money can be put towards advertising reaching considerably more people than Whiplash.

Producers of film tend to categorize viewers of media into different groups in order to have a clear idea of who they are targeting (different demographics). here are some characteristics of people in a population that are considered by film makers:

-Gender

-Age

-Religion

-Race

-Education

-Sexuality

-Income

There are also primary and secondary audiences:

Primary audience- The intended target audience for a media project

Secondary audience- A substantial number of viewers outside the primary target audience

Example: A primary audience maybe young children and the secondary audience maybe adults as the parents are the ones that are taking their children to view the film in the cinema.

Film of the thriller genre tend to have a more mature audience (18+) specifically psychological thrillers as they include more mature themes with more graphic violence that younger viewers may not be able to handle due to them being more immature and not exposed to more sinister ideas.

As a group, Edwina, Keisha and I though that our thriller film 'The Investigation' should be aimed at 16- 21 year olds based on both our understanding of our own thriller film and the survey we results

.

Here is the survey that we carried out on our target audience on what they like to see in thriller films which was very successful and insightful.