Target Audience General Research.

Target Audience Research. 

The target audience of a film is a specific group of people that the media, or in this case a film, intends to grab the attention of.  The directors / creators must know their target audience in order to understand what must be included in their film. They must include things that reach the intended audiences expectations. An audience can be defined as their Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Class status etc.

Examples: 

A very common and traditional way of audience profiling is to use a Demographic chart, this is to narrow down the search for the best target audience in relation to the film / piece of media. It defines the adult population by what particular work they do. It breaks the entire population down into six groups.  The chart then labels then using letter codes to describe the class status and income they receive. This type of profiling gives a wider choice than using just working, middle and upper class. For example, if a director decided to create a documentary about business and companies, they would look at the audience with the higher class professions and build on it from there.  This is the chart to the right:

Another way of audience profiling is psychographics, similar to demographics however it focuses more on the audience’s behavior and personality rather than the line of work they’re in. For example within psychographics they would differentiate between the types of genre that extroverts and introverts enjoy. This type of profiling is much more detailed and gives you more information than other types would.  This is an example of a psychographics chart, which differentiates between different types of personalities:

A more obvious type of audience profiling is Gender & Age, the creators / directors must decide on the target of Gender & Age before they can define their target audience any further. It usually depends on the type of film that the producer wants to create.  For example if a director wants to create an educational film on historical events the target audience would most typically be 40-60 years old, and if they wanted to create an action film about war it would typically be most popular with males as violence and weapons is mostly associated with males rather than females.  This chart is an example of age & gender to the right:

Distributor Target Audience Example:

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox is a major conglomerate, one of worlds most famous distributors, Distributing some of the worlds most famous movies e.g. Avatar, Titanic, Taken and Star Wars. Due to the different range of movies that they distribute, they don't have one specific Target Audience. For example Star Wars's Target Audience would Vary from Children to the elderly as it is such an adverse Trilogy, however Titanic would have an older Target Audience as it is a Romantic Tragedy. A quote from their website reads: "Creating moments that enter the collective imagination is built on crafting great stories, creating indelible characters, and continuing to push the boundaries of film making with technological advances". 

Taken
Taken is one of the many films Distributed by 20th Century Fox, which is of the Action/Thriller genre. The plot is summarised on IMDB as: "A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris." In the film Taken, the main character's Daughter is kidnapped, similarly to the main character Grace, in our short film. The film is rather complex and due to the genre it would have a Target Audience of age 12-50, as children generally wouldn't understand the complex events. The film's audience would typically be people that enjoy thriller films that include action, weapons and violence, also people that enjoy mystery.  





Also...
Also similar our film, a distributor most likely to distribute our film would be Warp Films. 

Warp Films

Warp films is an independent film and television company based in Sheffield and London in the UK. On their website, they claim: "We're better at distinctive, amusing and thought-provoking content". Something that one of the Big Six wouldn't say, meaning that they mainly distribute films that other major conglomerates usually wouldn't. They typically have an Audience of 15+, due to the fat that they usually distribute films that wouldn't be enjoyed or suitable for children. An example of a film distributed by Warp Fims is 'This is England'.

This is England:

This is england is one of Warp Film's most famous distributions, being rated 7.7/10 on IMDB. This film is in the crime/drama genre, ours being a Thriller/Drama which is famlilar. It is a british film containing British Values in their society and shows true representations, every character in the film is british, similar to ours due to the small budget. The film containt very similar shots to ours when the characters are out drinking, even though is has an extremely different story line. The film was given an age rating of 18 by the BBFC, this is due to the fact that it includes different scenes which wouldn't be suitable for people under the age of 18, such as violence. However our film is only rated 12A due to it hiding what happens to our main character Grace after she is taken.