Target Audience Profile

Certificate of our film:

We have decided to age our film overall as an 18. We have done this because our film
is a horror with a sub-genre of psychological thriller. Due to our film being a horror it
will contain gore and graphic scenes which can cause distress amongst viewers. Our
film also contains strong language that is unsuitable for minors.
The story line to the movie is twisted and you will have to follow the movie to be able
to fully understand it, similar to a conventional psychological thriller our film will
focus on the characters in the film and the audience will never be given a clear ending
to the film as they would in a conventional action where the good guy wins. Or a
conventional romcom where the couple get together and live happily ever after.
Selected scenes in the film are gory, and therefore are unsuitable for minors and could
cause psychological harm. The BBFC classified Saw (2004) an 18 due to:
Contains strong bloody violence. We have researched Saw
(2004) because we think this film is most similar to our film due to
the graphic torture scenes. The movie contains explicit language unsuitable to
a younger audience. By researching other horrors that we find to be similar to our
film, we have found that many are given the certificate 18 because of their graphic
nature. In the survey we carried out, we found that most people believed that horror
films were aimed at 16-25 year olds and 90% of the people we surveyed had seen the
Saw films, and 70% of the participants who had seen Saw stated that the Gore
appealed them.

Who will it appeal to? :

Due to our film being a mixed genre of horror and psychological thriller, our film will
appeal to fans of both genres. Although it has a certificate of 18 our film will most
likely be watched by people ages 15-25. This is because most horror films are aimed
at younger people who we think find it funny to feel fear over such films. Our film
will also appeal to older people who find it easier to understand a psychological
thriller and use intellect to try to make sense of the plot. We asked our audience what
age they believed most horror fans were, and 70% of participants stated that they
thought 15-25 years olds were the most likely horror fans.

Gender:

We feel that the movie will appeal more to the male audience rather than the female;
this is because the movie will have some gory bits in it, and the twisted disturbing
storyline would appeal more to men than women. We think women will still watch
the movie because our victim is a female university student, who we think our female
audience can relate to. In our survey we found that 80% of the male participants
enjoyed horror films and most stated that the Gore in horror films appealed more to
them than the storyline. We also found that more men had seen the “Saw” films than
women.
Age:

As the movie will have a certificate of 18, the target audience will be 18 & above.
However we feel that the oldest viewers will be around the age 60. As it stands, the
British Board of Film Classification would probably classify our production as 18
because of the scenes of violence and extreme peril which under 18’s could find
disturbing. Therefore we are aiming the film at people 18+ but accept the fact that
people as young as 15 might watch our film. The antagonist in our film is a university
student and we feel that having someone this age will appeal to our target audience
more because they can relate to her.

Race:

Our film will predominantly be aimed at English and American viewers and the
western culture because the film will have the qualities of a conventional western
horror. The protagonist will be a young innocent woman and the antagonist will be a
scary and powerful man, this is a generic situation in typical western horrors, for
example: Halloween (1978), A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), and Scream (1996).
Our actors are White British Teenagers and we feel that these characters relate to our
audience, we have not deliberately chosen these actors based on race, we chose our
actors based on their performance in auditions. We have made sure that our film will
not offend any other races and therefore our film could still appeal to other races and
audiences.

Class and interests:

We think that teenagers (15-18) and young adults (18-25) are the mostly likely
audience for our film and they will share the similar interest of socialising with
friends. Watching films is a common interest in young people, and most would opt for
a horror when they are in a group. Due to our film having a subgenre of psychological
thriller we think that this enables us to target our film at young adults or older viewers
with a higher level of intellect who will understand the film a lot better than a
teenager.