Lesson 09: Audience Research

Lesson 09: Audience Research 

20/11/13

MWE

The following post is dedicated to the research we have done regarding our target audience.

1. Who will be the audience for your media product?
   Our film is a like to movies such as: "Jennifers Body", "Prom Night" and "The Roommate" as we pointed out on the previous post on "Presentation, Structure and Sounds". Those films are Rated R and I imagine so will our film be seeing as we touch upon some similar elements: Violence, Alcohol etc. It's not a film we imagine parents would take their children to see as:
   
   1. That would be awkward.
   2. Inappropriate
   3. Not a family movie.
   
   Thus, we picture that it would appeal more to teenagers. However, we do explore psychology behind the characters particularly Jordan's state of mind. Therefor, it may attract young adult whom enjoys the genre of: Suspense and Mystery.
   
   
2. How do you know this?
   
   Research and the information provided by websites such as: IMDB (Internet Movie Database) are helpful and even yahoo answers as these are genuine people commenting about this film on related posts.
   
3. Have you / will you use Survey Monkey or similar as audience determination and research?
   
   We have read our synopsis to a group of people and gave some printed copy of the synopsis out and gave them to people of different age groups. We asked them to comment on it and we used their comments and placed them on Wordle to see what is the most common genre which came up. We've named it "JJI" (Jordan, Jane and Ivy) and kept our identity anonymous.
   
   Here's the link to the Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/7302126/Film%3A_JJI
   
4. Research into your chosen medium and genre
   
   The Wordle indicated that the people felt that our text belongs to the genre of "thriller", action and suspense had been mentioned but it seems that the dominating view of our film is that it's a Thriller. We are happy as this is what we were aiming for.
   
5. What is the typical audience?
   
   The age group which was prominent was teenagers, adults were also mentioned which we interpret as to mean that young adults would be interested in our text too. No mention of family or children whatsoever, which is good as this is not what we were aiming for.
   
6. How do they consume their media (which platforms etc)
   
   We find that it's easier to create a text which appeals teenagers as we ourselves belong to this age group. Consequently, we know what attracts and what sells to us. We have an insight to our market. We know that teenagers are heavily active in the web and that it could be argued that we are actually more engage in the internet than television or radio. Thus, if we were to advertise our film, we would use social media platforms such as: Twitter and Facebook.
   
   
7. To what extent are they active or passive? How will you address this in your
   construction?
   
   Seeing as the text centres around the mystery of Jordan's true identity, we want the audience to be active. We want them to speculate regarding who he is and what are his intentions and how is he related to the chaos in the narrative. Clues regarding his true identity will be gradually be revealed and we want our audience to be thinking how they all linked together.