Evaluation Q4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Age

When we first thought of our opening sequence we didn’t initially take into account the age range of who it would appeal to as we decided this much later. However, during our development and research we began comparing other films of the same genre and decided it would be a certificate 15 so therefore it would be aimed at people aged 15+. Along with this, we think the younger side of this age bracket would be more attracted to see it (Aged 15-24) and this is because these audiences tend to enjoy blood and gore, with productions of this genre being popular amongst this age group. This group also enjoy the social thrill of being scared with their friends and partners and finally our films story is quite mainstream and younger audiences tend to watch films considered mainstream.

Stereotypes

Younger women stereotypically enjoy chick-flicks such as “freaky friday” and more romantic films like “The Notebook”. Whereas men enjoy action and gory/horror films like “Rambo” and “Saw”. So at first glance it can be believed that our film may appeal more to men, However these stereotypes could be completely wrong and could appeal to both males and females.

Gender

We think that our audience would be mainly male, although it will also attract female viewers. This is mostly due to the style and genre of the film itself. In my research into audience profiles I found that males are more fond of zombie movies than girls, this is due to the amount of violence in these films which may be off putting for female viewers who aren’t used to this genre. Due to males looking for something to scare or exhilarate them, our film will be more attractive to males as they seek what this genre contains. The main character is also a male and this will lead male members of the audience to be able to directly link themselves with the character, allowing for a stronger pull to the story.

Habits and lifestyle

The audience of the zombie movies will most likely be of middle/working class and this means that they can relate to the characters in the film due to them being of similar class and background. This film will also appeal to supporters of this genre, such as avid zombie film fans or alternatively those who are interested in the production/distribution company.

Media Consumption

Our film would apply more to those who frequently go to the cinema, as well as those who use technological media, this is because this will be one of the main ways our film will become heard of, those who do not interact with technological media such as older people may not get the chance to hear about our film and therefore this excludes them from becoming a part of our audience. It is unlikely our film will be talked about frequently in other forms of media such as newspapers and magazines because of its low budget, usually only blockbuster or award winning films are talked about in these formats.

Similar films

Our film has very similar counterparts within this genre, So therefore to look at the audiences attracted by these other films in order to get a better understanding of the type of audience we will attract. For a film very similar to ours, 28 Days Later, It was found that it is males that were aged 18-29 who primarily watched zombie films.

Study based on audience for "28 Days Later"

How did our audience impact our film?

“We intend on going for the young adult audience. We find that this is because of the blood and gore inside the movie, and the sequence that we're going to create. We feel this is between the age range of 15 to 25 years of age. The certificate for this film will be under a BBFC 15 certificate, as this is the minimum age requirement for this genre of movie we're trying to make.” - extract from our target audience profile we developed in our treatment

The film we then produced was in response to the research we had done on our audience, we wanted to make it appeal as much as possible to those that most watched zombie films in order for it to be successful as possible, this meant following all of the mainstream ideas of what makes a good zombie horror and sticking to what we know works, rather than going completely off scale in a new direction.