Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Host: Hello and welcome back to the ASM show. Today I'm here with Thabo, Joe, Dom, and Nimat to talk about their main brief; Blackout.
(APPLAUSE)
BO: Thanks for having us.
Host: So, who would be the audience for your media product?
BO: Our main target audience is aged 15 and over as a certification of 15 allows a larger proportion of teenager to watch the film. We didn't make it a 12 as our media product doesn't fit with the guidelines of the BBFC requirements, and we didn't want to make adjustments to our product as it would have lost its scare factor. Also, we didn't certify the product as an 18 as we would lose half of our target audience.
Host: How did you come to that conclusion?
BO: Well, our product is filmed and edited to suit a demographic of C1-E, which includes skilled manual workers and the unemployed. As our target audience lies within these demographics, if its certification was any higher, not many people would like to view our product, which will narrow our viewing audience and reduce our profit.
Host: And how about your psychographic?
We looked at the psychographic of our desired target audience to see if their traits were compatible with the generic codes and conventions of the paranormal subgenre of horror. Sticking to these codes conforms to the audience's expectations. The younger demographic are stereotypically more likely to take risks and go to see an explicit media product, in comparison to the older demographic who are seen to watch more conservative products. The younger demographic's interpretation of what our media product presents is creative.
Host: What makes your audience want to watch horror films?
BO: Well, according to the uses and gratifications theory by Katz, the audience want to watch horror films as this is their option of relaxing in their free time. This is how they use the media. They then gratify the media in such ways such as escapism. They seek to escape from their reality, so they watch these films in order to feel better about life and think 'at least I'm not being possessed or someone's trying to kill me', or just to take their mind of reality completely.
For instance, our demographic target audience of teenagers would most likely want to escape from exam stress.
Host: Did you research into other similar products?
BO: Yes. We started by researching into similar products of the same paranormal subgenre that were proven quite successful in the box office. Films you may know like The Babadook, The Conjuring, The Blair Witch Project, The Grudge, The Ring, Insidious, Psycho, The Omen, the list goes on! They all have the certification of 15. And from this we decided to investigate and create a questionnaire for ages of 15 and over (because the typical certification for a horror is either a 15 or an 18).
Host: Now why don't you tell our viewers about that.
Y: Well, the results from the questionnaire showed the majority of participants to be 16, proving that they are constantly on social media (as we broadcasted our questionnaire via social media sites and apps), so this age group would always be fed our advertisement for our main brief online. They'd eventually share the advertisement and pass it onto their friends, giving our product a larger audience.
Z: Although comedy was voted the most favourite horror subgenre, we decided not to produce a mock horror as we would like to stick to the generic conventions of horror. It was interesting to see that the paranormal and psychological subgenres were the second and third most favourite ones to watch. That gave us hope for a main brief. The questionnaire also revealed to us that not many people of the younger generation favoured the slasher subgenre as they are immune to the fear it presents, so completely scrapped our first idea of a slasher in the shadows.
A: Most of the people who participated in the questionnaire are 15-17, which explains why the dominant price was £5-£10 - people of this age don't have extravagant amounts of money to spend so they look for cheap pleasure and entertainment. But appealing and earning a profit from thousands of teens is better than a few extravagant profits from a small selection of adults.
Host: So, how did you attract and address your audience?
BO: We worked with companies such as Lionsgate Entertainment and Ghost House Pictures who already have a large following of viewers interested in the horror genre. They have an establishment with our target audience as they have had previous success within the horror industry. We went out and showed members of our audience clips of our main brief and our narrative structure to see if they were interested and what they had to say. From there, they passed it on to their friends and so, getting across to more people, increasing the awareness of Blackout.
Host: Now I heard you presented some sort of pitch..?
BO: Yes, we had to present it to some of our investors. Our pitch was based on our questionnaire actually. It played a really big role in our target audience research as we gained some feedback from our investors. Someone asked "Do you think you'll be cutting out the female audience?". To this we answered that the male is our main audience, so there will be events within our product that will not appeal to the female audience and they will be excluded from the storyline. Males are more likely to be fans of horror than females are. This is due to the stereotypical thrill seeker, portrayed by the male. Violence is a convention of the horror genre, and is loved by males as they use violence to be dominant and prove their status. Although this is the case, our secondary audience is female, so we will make sure that the footage we shoot keeps them involved for the majority of the opening.
Host: After all the research you've clearly put in, how have you then applied this to your media product to produce this scare factor?
BO: The way we've used this research effectively is by presenting the micro elements in our media product. The micro elements are sound, mise en scene, editing, and camera angles, we have used a dynamic non-diegetic soundtrack, as well as costume such as the tracksuit that the male wears, to depict the stereotypical traits of a teenager. The editing techniques we used were match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot, and we conformed to these by using the 180 degree rule. We used a range of camera angles such as high and low angles to display the status of each character within our media product.
Host: How did you check throughout the production and post-production stages that you were satisfying your audience?
BO: We showed rough cuts of our product to members of our target audience and gained feedback from them on ways to improve. They gave us the strengths and weaknesses, to which we acted upon.
Host: Where did you gain inspiration from?
BO: We received many inspiration from all sorts of films, for example The Woman in Black, and the Exorcist. We were mostly inspired by the 2010 film Devil as it is based in an elevator, presenting the scare factor of everyday activities, and made reference to this in our product by having a demonic presence in the elevator.
Host: Thanks for your insight today
BO: Our pleasure.
Host: I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. This has been the ASM show, I'm your host Charles Gibson. Catch you later!
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