Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4: Target Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our core target audience would be 15-24, and our secondary target audience would be 24-34. Our film is aimed towards the younger target audience but not primarily. I would say that our cast is reflective of our target audience.

I am going to split this in to sections between age, gender, sexuality, social class, nationality and region, ethnicity and Physical ability/disability


Age:

Below are the Certificate pictures for age ratings in Britain.

	Universal	Suitable for all
	Parental Guidance	General viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children
	12 Accompanied/Advisory	Suitable for those aged 12 and older (cinema only); under 12s admitted, but only if accompanied by an adult
	12	Suitable for those aged 12 and older (VHS and DVD only)
	15	Suitable for those aged 15 and older
	18	Suitable for those aged 18 and older
	Restricted 18	Restricted to those aged 18 and older and only available at licensed cinemas and sex shops. The latter will not require a licence to sell R18 films

The BBFC guidelines for a 15 classification allows the following to appear in films:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenees of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

Here are a few examples of recent slasher films with the 15 rating:

Detention (Joseph Khan, 2011) 

Detention DVD cover

Scream 4 (Wes Craven, 2011)

Scream 4 DVD cover

Prom Night (Nelson McCormick, 2008)

Prom Night DVD cover

We have rated our film as a 15 due to the fact that our film doesn't contain any explicit nudity, however it does contain sexual references and violence form the outset and throughout. There were a few things we just didn't include, such as the 'sex' scene and the killing of the victims.

Gender:

Gender is a key theme in our production. The gender of our cast is highly signified through the way our characters dressed and acted, this is what we took into consideration whilst planning our film, for the costumes our characters would wear to signify their gender. All of our characters fit stereotypes, the doctor is a male which would fit the stereotype of the men being the workers and women being of the domestic role. Also the fact that males are more intelligent than women and earn more money than them without trying to play up to this stereotype it was signified heavily without us realising as the doctor is the one with the house and the car. 

Binary opposites were also used the example is between the killer and the scream queen we included. The scream queen played up to her stereotype perfectly because this is what we wanted her to be like, the typical scream queen to signify this she wore short shorts, she was blonde and she was portrayed to be sexually active as well playing up to the male gaze theory, These clear qualities may also provide intertextuality with the audience as they are clearly recognisable with the archetype examples from previous slasher examples, this is a method we are hoping will help us reach our secondary target audience as a primary target audience may be unfamiliar with any past slasher films apart form any recent films. The killer is a male like in many slasher films the killer is male (Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger) Our killer portrays strength and masculinity when compared to the scream queen he overpowers her and the doctor.

Sexuality:

In our film all of the characters we used are heterosexual. This is what is considered a normative representation. There was only one scene where we could anchor to the audience our characters sexuality which was where the scream queen leads the doctor to the bedroom. 

Social Class:

All our characters used in the opening are all shown to be of an equal class which fits into the C1 class however due to the fact that our film doesn't contain much dialogue at all it could be portrayed to be lower as it may be assumed that we aren't capable of using a complex challenging text. On the other hand our film is targeted towards teenagers so it is a presumably less wealthy audience.

Our film contains upper middle class characters which is signified again by the costumes we have chosen and how we directed our actors to act

Nationality and region:

Our film is set in Yorkshire so we have initially targeted a regional audience. All of the characters in our production are from Yorkshire which is reflective on our target audience as they probably will be too. We hoped that our setting would anchor the region but if it doesn't the characters should due to the accents used.

 Like Warp another low budget indie film company they target a regional and national audience rather than an international audience. Which is just like us as we don't have the funds or the time to create a film up to the standards of Working Title as they employ many different methods to attract their audiences whether its through their genre or use of A listers.

Physical Ability/Disabilty:

Our opening only contains physical able characters, not because of choice but because there is no one disabled in our class. However, i think that we would have been able to fit a role in nicely.

Audience for this Genre:

The slasher genre has been around since 1932 and it is still a popular genre up to this day, so there is clearly an audience for this genre. 
Here are some relevant Box Office figures: 

Scream 4 (USA)
Budget: $40m
BO: $38m

Eden Lake (UK)
BO: £481K

• Psycho (1960) made $32m at the US Box Office.
• Halloween (1978) made $47m at the US Box Office.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) made $10.8m at the US Box Office.
• Scream (1996) made $103m at the US Box Office.
• Saw (2004) made $55.2m at the US Box Office.
• Paranormal Activity (2007) made $108m at the US Box Office.

My film would not be like any of these big budget box office films. We don't have the funds to produce an extremely high budget movie like those above. Were more like Warp as we have sculptured our film towards a UK and regional audience unlike a big UK producer such as Working Title who sculpt their films towards a mass audience (UK and USA).