Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

From the research leading into the filming and opening sequence of our film we researched and felt that the perfect audience for psychological thrillers was between the ages of 18 and 29. Whilst researching we found that the number of male viewers is much higher than female viewers. During the planning of our opening sequence we tried to make sure that we kept to the codes and conventions of thriller to be able to fully engage our thriller audience as they have been successful in achieving this target audience. Being only 16, 17 year olds, my group and I thought that it would be a bit complicated reaching this target audience. Although our original target audience was for those 15 and older, meaning films under the BBFC guidelines, hard narrative of the film. As our film does not fulfil all the criteria for 15+ film drugs, frequent use of strong language, violence, adult themes strong sexual references and nudity without graphic details can be used in our film and could be seen by the target audience. As our aim was an opening sequence and not the full film, our timeframe was 2-3 minutes which enabled us to introduce the film which would then lead up to bigger things as we are setting up the main narrative. The rating would be lowered as if it was being advertised to the general public. 

The main protagonists of our opening sequence are all middle aged characters as they are placed in situations which 15+ year olds would not understand or be able to relate to because they would often occur later on in their adult lives such as affairs (which is part of the narrative). Unfortunately this might be a downfall when it comes to achieving our primary target audience which we initially aimed for. However, those who will watch our final product will be of a different type of audience compared to the young adults set out to try and appeal during our planning and research. With our new secondary target audience we aim for middle aged men and women to view it, making it an equal target profile. Our editor Lydia pointed out that one of our main reasons for changing the target audience would be that “middle aged adults are less likely to seek out films that scare them and that are disturbing which are what the younger generation tend to go for". We plan on still having elements of thrillers which create suspense through the use of our score. For example when the lead male protagonist (played by Simon Duncan) wakes to his wife, yielding a knife, about to kill him, the score leading up to that part becomes jumpy and tense which sets the mood. The use of the knife has an inter-textual reference to Hitchcock, in the 1960 well known thriller, 'Psycho', shower scene where the knife is the key prop used in a brutal murder. The use of intertextual reference to such an iconic film our older audience members would know the film quite will making them want to watch our title sequence thus attraction them. As it was a popular film many are able to make the connection to the knife and Psycho also giving it a shack factor but ask it is familiar to them.  Our slightly older characters and target audience members are of the same age will be able to relate with the characters on screen, relating and sympathising with them, depending on the situations they are placed in.