4 Who is YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE for your film?

Who is my target audience: Action Steps

1) Who is my primary target audience? British, Male and Female, 15-30 year olds who love watching thriller/ hour films.
2) What makes my film stand out from the competition? Our film is about a group of three teenagers who enter a mental asylum and practice doing a ouija board not realising the consequences of doing so when an evil spirit starts to haunt them.
3) Why should my audience watch my film? Total Film state that this film is 'The best thriller since its genres inception"

I understand that understanding my audience will allow me to create a profile of my ideal audience. This can be helpful when I create marketing strategies.

Audiences can be defined in different ways.
Audience can be segmented and defined by their GEARS
Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Region and Nationality
Socio Economic.

Today I decided to start making notes on my target audience for my film Asylum.
Age: 16-30 years of age
Gender: Male and Female
They tend to watch TV Shows like Sherlock,  Breaking Bad, Dexter and Hannibal.
They are likely to visit the cinema and watch films such as Insidious, Eloise, Shutter Island.
In their leisure time they tend to spend the majority of their time watching youtube videos, play video games, eat at restaurant such as Nandos, Pizza Express, McDonalds and Burger King.
They like to go clothes shopping at shops such as: All Saints, JD and Top Man.
They use a variety of different modern technologies such as the iPhone, Macbook air, iPad.

Below,I have made an audience profile based on NME's reader profile.  The second one has been made by NME


My research demonstrated that all products (including mass media products such as print magazines) have clearly segmented and distinct audiences based on gender, age and socio-economic groups as these examples illustrate. This source is from Bauer Media Advertising.

Another way of defining audiences is from Psychographic profiling. There are many different way of profiling audiences such as socioeconomics, demographics and psychographics.
Psychographics is a technique used for describing an audience by there characteristics and personality, young and rubicon created this to study audiences.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
In 1954, human behaviour reflects a hierarchy of needs which range from the most fundamental needs for food, warmth and security through to those related to our personal development. Unsatisfied needs motivate our behaviour. Maslow's theory provides a framework for understanding how media works and why certain products have the power to attract us.


Adorno and the culture theory.
For Adorno advertising creates false needs. He argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' the opposite of 'true' art to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic. 
False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system and which can replace people's true needs- freedom,creativity and genuine creative happiness.
For example, Disney's advertising campaign on Beauty and the Beast is creating a need, as they are saturating us with merchandising to make us feel like we need to go and see the film. This leading for the film making 350 million dollars on the opening days, making it a success.


BFI exit polls.
The bfs carries out exit polls to find out audience responses for film screenings.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/film-industry/lottery-funding-distribution/insight-reports-case-studies-audience-research/exit-polls

Here is a screenshot of the BFI exit polls about the film 71'. Its says in the spreadsheet that more men than female went to see it. It is equal between older and younger people, but more younger people saw it. 36% of people went to see it because the story appeared to them, whilst only 1% of people went to see it because of the poster.