Audience research - Secondary

This is an audience profile for don't be afraid of the dark, due to be released later this month. Due to the film not yet being released the profile on Pearl and Dean was

This is the reader profile for total film magazine. Alongside Empire it is one of the Britain's biggest selling film magazines. Each issue includes interviews and pieces with big name movie stars or directors etc as well as reviews on up coming films and existing films/ new dvd releases. After looking at the demographics it is obvious that the target audience is wide, but mainly focuses on a younger audience- so this could be a style model for our film magazine as we would like to appeal to a younger primary audience, but having a wide secondary audeince also gives the film more appeal - Clark Warberton

This is the reader profile and information for Empire magazine. Empire magazine, along with Total Film magazine, is the biggest and most popular mainstream movie magazine. Each issue features the most recent and big budget films, such as Inception and The Dark Knight, rather than small independent films which appeal to a more niche audience. This is because their readers are the type of adults that watch and enjoy the biggest mainstream films featuring the biggest stars. As mentioned in the reader profile above, Empire's readers are around the age of 28, the majority being of the ABC1 class status, therefore most likely being sophisticated and modern adults, who are interested in the newest technology and keeping up to date with the newest films. Within this age range in general, this type of character takes up the majority, as most 28 year old adults are in full time employment with the money to spend on these things and the lifestyle to suit it. Due to the age group that we will be aiming our products at, this will obviously affect the contents, storyline, themes etc in our horror film. Adults who are watching a horror film expect to feel real fear, with different themes and feelings than that of a scary film aimed towards a younger audience. The type of themes adults expect to see the characters dealing with from any type of film, including horror films, are themes like sex, alcohol and drugs, and these other type of real issues. Horror films can often take a situation and make it what may seem unrealistic in everyday life, for example someone being haunted and possessed by a demon, and this of course works well in this genre, yet I believe it is important for there to be certain real life issues always involved, which ensures that the audience always has something they can relate to in a film. Not everyone in the target audience has experienced being haunted or possessed by a demon, yet the majority of people can relate to the feeling of isolation, or relate to the issue of sex or alcohol.

We want our product to be the type of film these people would want to watch. We want to reach a mainstream audience, and we would want it to appear in a magazine like Empire magazine. Due to this, we must take the target audience of Empire magazine into consideration when we consider our own audience, and then take this through into creating our products, always ensuring that the work would appeal to this mainstream audience. - Rebecca Hart

After looking at my reader profile, i have a better idea of what who we should target our magazine and film too. We are going to make it a mainstream horror film to be shown at cinemas etc. Film Ink is a large film magazine company in australia showing both national and international films. It has a large following of people, including some celebrity fans. Their media information section gave me some of their reader profile including information such as the typical reader is male, single, around 35 and is in the AB socio-economic group. I now know that to make a film magazine, this is the type of audience to target. I will now look at the reader profile of a horror film and will do primary research of my audience to get a better understanding of my audience and where to target my film - By Charlotte Alderson

This is an audience profile of Paranormal Activity 3, which is soon to be released in cinemas. After looking at the ages of the audiences, I can see that the majority of the audiences are between the ages of 15-24, by quite a large margin. Obviously there are no percentages for audiences under the age of 15 due to the film certification, and the rest of the audiences decrease in percentage as the age increases. This shows me that for this type of horror film, which is likely to be similar to our eventual film idea, it is important to appeal to this 15-24 year old audience, as these are the type of people that take up the majority of the audience. In terms of the male to female ratio, is is a fairly even split, with slightly more males at 53%. This again shows me that for this genre and this type of horror film, it is important to be fairly gender neutral, not targetting one sex more than the other. It is important that it appeals to both genders equally or you risk losing out on a large chunk of the target market, which in this case would have a big effect. In terms of social status percentages, I can see that Paranormal activity generally appeals more to the C1 and DE classes, which is the lower middle class and working class, unemployed and dependents. It doesn't appeal so much to the higher social classes, which may be due to lifestyle choices which involve not going to the cinema regularly, or it could be the case that films of this genre don't generally appeal to these classes. The effects that this may have on the production or marketing of this film is that it would most likely be based around characters of a similar social class to the audience, as this allows them to relate to the film better, and would most likely be marketed via formats that are likely to reach this taget market. These findings effect my work in that my product is likely to be similar to this film, in terms of the ages, the gender ratio, and the class status of the audience, therefore it would be useful to relate back to the production of this film, and also the film poster and which magazine it appeared in, whilst developing my own ideas. - Rebecca Hart

Looking at this film audience profile we notice that no-one went to see the film under the age of 18- obviously due to the fact of the certificate 15 on the film. The largest sector of people that went to see this film were between 15 and 24 with a massive 60% of its audience in that age group. It also had 19% of viewer the age group above, 7% of the audience between 35 and 44 and then 14% over 35. This would give us a good idea of the audience we are targeting and also give us a good idea of a target audience to aim at. The biggest percentage of genre in the audience was female but only slightly with a 53% average compared to the male 47%. You also get a larger proportion of people coming from the DE socio-economic group (32%), with the smallest audience going from an AB backgound (18%). information like this gives is the target audience to our genre. we need to target the right age, gender and background to target our market properly and effectively. the film companies would only waste both money and time to the wrong audience.