Researching the Target Audience

Researching the Target Audience

A zombie-horror film with a 15
 age certificate 

Horror films are made to  scare the audience, create tension and to play with their emotions and often leaves them unsettled by the end.  A zombie horror is a sub-genre which aims to provoke fear through the use of zombies.  It also makes the audience curious as to what it would be like if this was reality as many films are based in familiar locations, e.g. I Am Legend and Shaun of the Dead also, the film wants the audience to think about what they would do if they were in a familiar situation and how long they would survive. This is backed up in the article below:

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-appeal-zombie-films-1463533.html?cat=40
 

The biggest film watching age group is 18-34 (the golden category with both money and leisure time); however, people in their late teens and twenties are the biggest viewers of horror films. The producers use this to their advantage when they are handed with a film script; they choose main characters that are within this age group and it will enable the audience to relate with the characters and have an emotional connection as they have similarities. As well as this age group, the sub genre Zombie-horror appeals to both genders and it has become an increasingly popular genre for females.

 

The site below gives advice for defining a target audience:

http://www.filmmakingstuff.com/define-your-movies-target-audience/

Following this format I would say:

Make a list of 5 ideal movie fan categories for your title
- fans of magazines such as SFX - could get info about the dempgraphic from this
- SFX relies heavily on e.g. Twitter and Facebook so younger media literate fans
- Mostly males but also dedicated female fans
- Fans of other related products and films
- Fans of horror genre generally
Figure out why these fans should watch your movie.
- enjoy watching chaos
- how would I cope?
- enjoyable violence
- high drama and tension
- good special effects

From looking at the British Board of Film Classification (bbfc)’s website, I feel that our film should be a 15 as it would have scenes of violence, gore and scenes that may be unsettling or disturbing for those under 15. I feel as though the age rating 18, would be too high as it won’t have large amounts of gore and foul language won’t be overused.  Also from looking at my research into zombie-horror films, I have seen that many of these films, for instance I Am Legend and Shaun of the Dead, were awarded with the age rating certificate of 15 meaning that it can be viewed by people aged 15 and older. The photo below shows the British Board of Film Classification’s (bbfc) description of what is a ‘15’ film and what sort of things can be included.

A screen shot from the bbfc's website briefly showing what a  '15' film can include

The majority of this age group will either still in education, whether that’s high school, college, sixth form or university that’s why many of the films tend to contain people in this age group as it’ll make the film appear more attractive the this age group as they can wonder what they’d be like in a similar situation. Also, a lot of teenagers talk about films when they are with their colleagues so when they hear others talking about a film, they may want to see it themselves.

From looking around online, I feel as though I agree with what I have read as I know a lot of teenagers who go out and regularly watch zombie-horror films. So we will cater for this age group by including several of the points listed in the above screen shot, e.g. swearing and violence.

However, this article shows that horror has an unexpected audience of academics out there:

http://www.socraticmethod.net/essays/zombies/page2.htm

Horror is a really widely studied genre, mostly because it always deals with death and a lot of philosophy is based around the idea of us handling the idea that we will die.