Audience Research

Target audience research can tend to be a little limited, but it is a vital area that many of you can improve by trying to go beyond the basics of simply stating your target audience to trying to add much further depth.


Some tips:

Audience research companies main manner of breaking down audiences is as follows:
Older males (&gt;25) Older females (&gt;25) Younger males (<25 data-blogger-escaped-females="females" data-blogger-escaped-younger="younger">
Some of the giant blockbusters (James Bond, Harry Potter, some Pixar films) attempt to be 4 quadrant films- films that appeal to all 4 of these different groups. Most other films will attempt to specifically target 1 or 2 of these quadrants.

Your starting point should be to identify which of the quadrants would appeal to and why, exploring things such as your genre and theme.

Other things you may wish to consider is whether your film would appeal to a large, mainstream audience or more of a specialised, niche audience.

2. Who is the target audience for the films you looked at when looking at Influences?

While this overlaps slightly with your Influences, you can point out the appeal of certain similar existing films that have appealed to the same sort of audience you are going for. One way to try to 'prove' this is to use the IMDB to look at audience votes and the differences between age group and gender. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/ratings is an example from 'The Hunger Games'. If you are planning for your film to be similar to this, you could make your point more convincingly about who the film is for and equally, who the film is not for. PLEASE NOTE: You should pay more attention and spend more time analysing the average score rather than the number of votes, as clearly males are just slightly nerdier and spend more time voting for films.

3. Are there any other audience groups that your film may appeal to?


While it is good to identify your main target audience in terms of age and gender, your film may also have a more specific appeal. For example, Tyler Perry's Madea film franchise is not particularly well known here, but in America the films make tens of millions of dollars, drawing out a huge crowd of African-American audience members but very few white Americans.

4. What other 'niche' factors could be considered about how you might appeal to an audience?

It is worth consulting the http://industry.bfi.org.uk/exitpolls and looking at some of the Excel documents (so this may not work on the MAC computers) for reasons. For example, 25% of people who were asked about the appeal of 4.3.2.1. stated that it had to do with the use of London (and New York) locations (see below). This will help you in terms of looking for more obscure and interesting reasons why your film may appeal.

5. What different 'tribes' of youth may be especially interested in your film?

The website uktribes.com provides a fantastic service in exploring the different types of youth audiences. This can especially useful in terms of judging the kind of 'attitude' that your audience may have.

6. Would your film be limited to a UK audience or might it have a global appeal?

Even though it was Oscar nominated and starred Brad Pitt, 'Moneyball' was only released in select cinemas in the UK. The reason was fairly simple: it revolved around baseball.

The reverse is also true: while having some success in the UK, Anuvahood went straight to DVD in America. It was felt that an urban story quite specific to the UK that parodied other British 'urban themed' dramas that were released straight to DVD in America was never going to have a big appeal.

You need to think about your own production and realistically assess whether the story would be 'universal' or something specific to British audiences?

7. What limitations are there on your production?

Too often with AS blogs, candidates imagine that an audience would magically come to see their film. It would be interesting to consider aspects like the fact that your film is British (traditionally means a struggle at the box office- see http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/stats/BFI-Statistical-Yearbook-2011.pdf)that your film will have no stars (traditionally seen as being important for box office) and to explore how these kinds of factors are going to effect the difficulties in getting people to see it and how you are looking to 'combat' against this. (e.g. Genre or Critical Acclaim).

It is worth noting that the mark scheme explicitly addresses the need to have a clear target audience- these questions are to provide some guidance as to how you might achieve a Level 4 rather than be prescriptive.