Target Audience Research

There are a number of different audience theories which suggest reasons as to why people watch certain media texts and what happens once they've experienced them. The hypodermic needle theory suggests that media texts are injected into the viewer as they are passive and powerless to prevent influence. This theory is heavily linked with a number of cases for example 'A Clockwork Orange' supposedly influencing a number of rapes and violent crimes. It is the idea that audiences are easily influenced by the media they consume.

The uses and gratification model on the other hand is based on the idea that the audience is active rather than passive. It states that the audience uses the text for their own personal gratification for 4 needs:

• diversion - escaping form everyday pressures, distracting yourself from the real world
• personal relationships - companionship through identification with television characters or other people in the media
• Personal identity - ability to compare life with the characters and situations portrayed
• Surveillance - information gathering

With this in mind, in order to narrow down our target audience we produced a questionnaire asking questions such as age, gender, gender preference of a hero and villain, favourite genre and opinions of possession story lines. In doing this, we were able to see which people prefer what and therefore determine the audience in which our production will attract.

One of the questions asked ‘Would you prefer a Male or Female Villain?’ and results from the questionnaire showed that females only would prefer to see a male villain, although more females than males would prefer a female villain (right). Due to the fact that our production’s villain will be played by a female, we can conclude that a large proportion of our audience will be female. Similarly, when another question saying ‘Would you prefer a Male or Female Hero?’ we found more females than males to say they prefer a female hero character (below), which our film will include.

We are able to determine the rough age range that our production will attract from the graph below which suggests that people aged between 15 and 25 are mostly interested in the thriller and horror genres. We will therefore target out film toward this age group as the production will be based on these genres.

From the results, we can conclude that the audience we are targeting will be both males and females however mainly females, who are between the ages of 15 and 25. This is due to the things involved in the film for example characters. The cast will be mostly female, which will attract a female audience as they can connect better with the characters.