Target audience for horror films

 It is very important to know your target audience when creating film as to know who you is dedicating the scene in the film but also it can help you decide what content can be included within the film for example the older audience may prefer a different editing style to a younger audience. This means that there must be a certain understanding of the target audience e.g. what film genre they like, what themes etc. As this understanding can mean better viewing rates than a story with no knowledge of the target audience.

 A horror films target audience is generally those in the age group 15-25. This is because we have created a questionnaire and the people which we had sampled where between these ages but they have also suggested the age group they are thinking that is suitable for horror films. It is mostly aimed at men as they are more likely to be able to interact with the characters in the film. Women can interact with those on screen to but they would tend to react differently as they are more sensitive.

The secondary audience could be dating couples. This is because they could show each other affection by sitting very close to each other, hugging and caring for one another.

To find about my target audience my group created a questionnaire which could be answered by a group of people. Looking at the researched gathered what I concluded about the age and gender of my target group is that, the target audience for most comedy horror films is roughly aged between 17 to 25 and there were more male who would watch a horror film than a female this chart can show you:

The conclusion we get from this is that there are a lot more boy that girls watching and wanting to watch horror films.

We were than left with the decision of weather to choose a more specific target audience or a broader target audience. The advantage of having a more specific target audience is that the film can be easier composed as the audiences are already known. It is also helping the filmmakers aka me, my group, but also thinking in real life films the marketing director’s job are made easier as they do not have to worry about making the film appealing to a wider group of tasters. Nevertheless having a smaller target audience also has some disadvantages being that the filmmaker may not make as much money as you would, if you had a bigger audience to appeal to. For example The Blaire Witch Project is a Transmedia project from 1999 which means that was a film than comic book, video game and website including mythology and documents. Their target audiences were both male and female aged between 17-30 years old as because this age range would be the ones who would be looking on the internet at the time and would be able to see the campaign that was put in place and the way they used the website to make it seem like a true story. They also had a small budget around $35.000 however because of the campaign and the adverts but also the wide target audience they have gathered at the end around $150 million in the US, it exceeded all expectations. However an example of a small tight target group is the film “Tormented” which was aimed when releases mostly at teenagers as the end results shows $452,479 meaning they didn’t gather as much money as other films due to their target audience.

 

Finally from all the research of the questionnaires and the internet research of other films’ target audience I decided that our target group should be people between ages 16-24 but can also appeal to older audience and younger with about 2 years, as this age bracket is the most popular in most horror film viewers. This means that we will be aiming to get 16 documents which mean that we could include mature themes in the film opening. We will also have the same target group for the advertising process.