Question 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media film is ultimately aimed at a rather older audience, as they might be more familiar with

the genre of the film. Our demographics state that the audience that would be most attracted to our

film would be men aged 35 and older, who are in the social class A/B (this includes occupations such

as: teachers, lawyers, doctors, bankers etc).

We chose this audience as our genre is one of the oldest film genres that have gradually become less

popular, moving the market for a noir film to a more niche audience. After analysing data from the

UK film council (http://lewishodson1412.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/media-coursework-identifying-

target.html#comment-form), we found that it was these demographics that found our genre most

appealing, as they find the conventions of the genre more interesting, or they can remember

watching films of the genre when they were younger. Only 10% of people who go to the cinema

would enjoy watching the genre, and only 1% who would say the genre is their favourite. Of the

original 10% of the audience, the gender by age that watched and/or enjoyed it more was only 13%

of men aged 35 or over. In addition, of the 1% that found the genre to be their favourite, 2% of them

were also men aged 35 or over. However, this did not completely narrow our audience down to just

the one given by the UK film council, as there are a lot of elements in the film and the genre that

may still appeal to a minority number of younger audiences, who are possibly familiar or never

watched the genre before.

When deciding our film audience, we also needed to consider our

BBFC classification, meaning the age rating that we found to best

suit our opening. From our classification, this ruled out any possible

audience under the age of 15, as we thought this would be the

better age rating considering our main issues

(http://lewishodson1412.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/media-

coursework-age-classification.html#comment-form). This did help

narrow down and establish our possible options for target

audiences, however, were not entirely necessary we could have

followed the average classification of most noir films.

As noir began to become less popular, many major cinemas began to stop showing them, and

instead, the genre was left to more independent cinemas. Because of this decrease, both in the

number of cinemas showing noir and the numbers in audiences (10% of cinema goers), this brought

the genre into targeting a more niche audience as time moved on. This was evident from our

research into the UK film council information and looking into different film distributors for our film,

as there were quite a low percentage of audiences who enjoyed the genre and very few existing film

distributors that specialised in noir. This had a fairly large effect on establishing our target audience,

as it narrowed down the number of the public who would be generally interested in our film.

During our research into different film audiences, we interviewed a likely member of our target

audience, Mr Healey. He is aged 35+ and due to his occupation, falls into our preferred social class

and gender.

Mr Healey is generally interested in most music styles,

especially jazz music, included in old fashioned films, such

as our chosen genre. This is also that is enjoyed with a

modern blend to it, for example, mixing jazz with techno

to add a new yet old effect. His TV and film preferences

also include something that has elements like suspense

and plot twists, and especially likes detective stories, as

you can follow with the deductions as the plot develops. A

few examples of this included CSI, Sherlock Holmes

stories, Blade Runner. His dislikes in terms of the

questions we asked him, was more modern music such as

pop and R&B, and hates TV and films that include

romances that have no significance to the plot.