Target audience

Target audience

• 1.
  Target AudienceIn orderfor our teaser trailer to reach as big an audience as possible, we need to research who exactly our audience would be.
• 2.
  A Sci-Fi Film... Tobegin this research we examined who the target audience is for our chosen genre, sci-fi. We did this by examining who exactly watched, and liked some sci-fi films that influenced us. We chose to examine the audiences for the films 'War of the Worlds’ and ‘I Am Legend’ as they both have similar plot lines to our text:‘War of the Worlds’‘I Am Legend’Both of these charts shows that males were the more frequent viewers of the films, with 98,664 of them rating ‘War of the Worlds’ compared to just 13,749 females. Both genders however, overall give a similar rating for the films, with females even rating ‘I Am Legend’ slightly higher than males did. This shows that while both genders enjoy this genre, it is males who actually watch it more. Our text addresses this imbalance, as our protagonist is female, unlike the protagonist in the two films above. This therefore may attract a larger female audience as they can relate to the character and text more. A female protagonist may bring more feminine characteristics to the film, without losing the sci-fi elements that have proved popular with both genders.
• 3.
  Continued... The introduction ofa female protagonist should not decrease the male audience as action/ adventure/ sci-fi films with female lead characters still prove to be popular with men, e.g. ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’
• 4.
  Age... Both ‘War ofthe Worlds’ and ‘I Am Legend’ proved to be most popular with people aged 18-29. This makes sense as this age group are the most frequent cinema visitors. Our protagonist is a school pupil and the text is set in a school. This may possibly isolate the older end of this age group as it could feel like they cannot relate to the film, losing their interest. We hope however, that this is not the case as school life is a universal theme that almost everyone has experienced and should therefore be able to relate to. The text is also not set during your average, everyday school life but in an abandoned school where only one pupil remains. This should decrease the risk of losing the older audience members, a should the fact that the protagonist is not a really young pupil but a teenager, around the age of 16. We also hope that by having a young protagonist this may increase the audience aged below 18. So for example, if the text got a 15 rating certificate, hopefully the use of a young, relatable character and setting may encourage people aged 15-17 to see the film. Another way in which a younger audience could be attracted could be by using music that is popular with that age group.
• 5.
  Plot... A key partof the plot-line is the isolation of the protagonist, who is abandoned on her own. This therefore brings an aspect of a ‘disaster movie’ into the plot, e.g. the end of the world etc. This means that our text is not a one-dimensional sci-fi film filled with endless alien battle sequences or technological talk. It instead has a quiet, eerie tone as well as the sense of being a more conventional sci-fi later on when the reason for the character’s isolation is revealed. This should widen the target audience as these contrasting parts will attract two different types of audience who are looking for different things from the film. It also does no constrict our audience to one type of person but allow fans of other genres and people of all classes and ages to enjoy the film.