Wednesday 2 March 2022

Target Audience

As a group we discussed what age rating our opening title sequence should be, we decided that it should be targeted at people 15 and over, as several similar products including: The Hunt, The Purge, and Squid Game are all rated a 15. By looking at similar products we can gauge who our target audience will be, I used ratings from IMDB to see a rough age range and how many men and women liked the similar products, these results suggest that our sequence should be more so skewed to be targeted at the male audience:

                  The Hunt                                                                      The Purge

               Squid Game                                                         The Hunger games


Even though IMDB suggests that our opening title sequence should have a clear male audience with the ages ranging from 30-44, these figures arent entirely accurate. As firstly- not everyone logs their reviews, whereby reviews are often connotated with an older audience, especially on IMDB. Also, the movie is rated a 15, therefore if anyone younger were to leave a review, their age would be registered as older than 18. Moreover, all of the reviews hint that IMDB is more of a middle-aged men's website whereby movie reviews were logged, this is proven whereby I looked at the statistics for the children's movie "UP" where over 300,000 of the 1,000,000 reviews were from men between the ages of 30-44.
Despite the slight skew in the data, these reviews are still crucial when looking into who our target audience is, and we can take these reviews on board when setting our target audience.
I think that if we were to make our title sequence into a movie, it would be targeted at no specific gender with the ages ranging from 18-20, although despite this I don't believe that the estimated target age defines who would watch it and that a wider age range would certainly watch it. Moreover, I think that our opening title sequence could be targeted at males or females depending on the way we edit it and the costumes we use.
The targeted age is people over 15, this is because of some of the gruesome aspects we show, including the scene where we slit Meadow's throat. Therefore, by setting our target audience at a minimum of 15 we still have a wide target audience who will watch the movie, targeting it at an older audience makes the movie appeal more to a formal background whereby the audicen knows that the plotline should be rougue and not people under the age of 15 (children).
By targeting a specific audience were able to market our product to a specific group using marketing that's effective for them. For example, using television advertising wouldn't be so effective for us as firstly we don't have the budget for that and also that not everyone would want to watch our movie! by using specific social media advertisements through the use of data of the consumer that would be more effective, it would also be effective to market it through action thriller specific websites our target audience will be more exposed to our movie.
I think our target audience could lean moreso towards the male audience through the use of Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, whereby men are more inclinded to watch something if there's an attractive woman in the movie. Our opening title sequence is based around two girls being hunted, stereotypically hunting is a "mans sport" whereby the use of guns and shooting can be extremely violent which is stereotypically not for girls due to their fragility. 
Although I do also think that the empowerment of women targets a female audience, whereby women are more likely to enjoy a movie based around strong, independent women. Moreover, we made the protagonists character a strong representative of women, which would make the female audience more inclined to watch the movie as it subverts common stereotypes which don't represent women in such a inspirational manner. 
To conclude there's no clear gender-targeted audience, as it is targeted at both the female and male audience. The use of no specific targets could lead to a more profitable movie as more people feel inclined to watch it.


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Our opening title sequence