Audience Research

Audience Research

The target audience for our film is 16 or over. This is because our genre is a horror film, and a convention of horror means that some sort of gore and violence will need to be in it. Our film will be unsuitable for very younger viewers as it deals with themes such as murder. Our film is also targeted more at the older viewers as there is not too much violence that would entice the younger viewers. Instead there is a deep story with a huge twist. 

According to Val Morgan Cinema Network, 37% of horror movie audiences are between 18-24. Naturally, as a result of this figure, many horror movies will target this age range, as it is the one that will bring them the most money in the box office, and our film is no different.

There are some cases that films get a higher age rating than requested by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). BBFC director David Cooke said that around 10% of films each year which come in with a particular category request end up with a higher one that they asked for. This means that in order to get a high audience, some horror films still have to monitor the amount of gore they involve in the film.

The BFI statistical yearbook has some interesting statistics in terms of audience. It shows that 42% of people in the UK who went to see The Woman in Black, a horror/thriller hybrid starring Daniel Radcliffe, were between 15-24 years of age. This shows that the common audiences for horror films are adolescence and young adults. In terms of gender significance, there was a fairly even split for The Woman in Black, with 44% male and 56% female. In terms of the Top 20 Films of 2012, The Woman in Black was the most popular horror film, at 14th place, which grossed £21.3 million in the Box Office. It was however 4th in Top UK qualifying Films. It is also worth pointing out that this was an independent film, and therefore perhaps had less resources than most other movies in the box office.In the UK and Ireland in 2012, there were 45 Horror films accounting for £62 million of the box office. 45/647 shows that there is less demand for horror films than perhaps action films or comedies, however still acquiring £62 million at the box office shows that there is still a demand for horror films. 5.8% of the gross box office comes from Horror films.

Herbert Blumer, a sociologist, came up with the idea of mass audience. This is where people could use media to gain popularity with a mass audience. Hitler and Stalin were said to use mass audience by using the media to persuade people to follow their policies. Herbert Blumer said that mass audiences were dangerous. He said that mass audiences come from all walks of life, are an anonymous group of anonymous individuals and are loosely organised and cannot act within the unity of a crowd. There is little interaction between members of a mass. However, he is wrong, as mass audiences act in specific segments in a crowd. Demographics can be used to identify mass audiences in film. Demography is the study of human population. The five demographics in media are class, age, gender, interests and race. An example of how age could be split by demographics is:
- under 16
- 16-19
- 19-30
- 30-45
- 45-60
- over 60
Also, there is often a split in terms of the behaviour of the audience. Mainstreamers are 40% of the population who like belonging to a group, aspirers want esteem of others, succeeders already have status and control and reformers define themselves by their self-fulfilment.

We are thinking that the key media demographic that we are using is age. We believe our film will be best suited to the 16-19 and 19-30 age groups, as these are the ages most similar to our characters and therefore the audience can relate to them.