Audience profiling and target audience research

when researching our audience for the horror movie we have proposed, we needed to consider many different things. firstly, although there is only a small margin between gender preferences towards horror movies- there is a significant 16% difference in who watches horror movies more- with women being more popular viewers. this allowed us to make the conclusion to include a main female antagonist/ protagonist to influence the story line. In addition, we saw an open market here to create an appeal here to attract a wider male audience- influencing why we choose for our car driver to be a male, with masculine habits that viewing males can relate to. in contrast, the sky horror channel reported that 58% of their viewers are male.  In the other statistical chart it is clear to see that the least likely audience for our horror movie would be 50+, however there was too a low percentage of older adults in their 30s to 40s which allowed us to create a film based more around themes younger adults would grasp and be involved in watching.

In our investigation into audience profiling and target audiences, i found that this video showing audience reactions to a horror based stage performance that considers itself to be one of the scariest productions..targeted at a 15+ audience. I myself went to see the 'Ghost Stories' which acted as inspiration to our movie making process because Ghost Stories is based around making audiences feel as if everything they include is completely realistic and chillingly evidenced. From this, we wanted to ensure our film seemed realistic and it came across as relatable and serious to audiences. the video showing audience reactions was useful to our audience profiling task because for this type of reaction we need to ensure we include key features and typical aspects of horrors like the jump scares and edge-of-seat plots. The video also gave us an insight into some of the key people who watch horrors and realistic mainstream horror performances like this...as we could see in the movie the audience was filled with lots of young adults.

This image is a portrayal of somebody who we would aim our movie towards-this female is 24 years old with a fairly middle class status. generally, this specific age range has a particularly good social life- with connections from university or college education systems as well as work and external friendships. a statistic from factbrowser.com states that 66% of Americans aged 24 go to the movies in groups of at least 3 people- which would be the direct appeal for our movie as horrors are generally not viewed by individual single audience members. Also,our mainstream horror directly appeals to this audience profile because other horrors like cult horrors, series/sequeled horrors and classics like the exorcist, nightmare on elm street all have an older generation audience and we wanted our movie to be more modern and relevant to the times now. Also, the strong gory themes with alcohol abuse and the death of a child may be too graphic and much younger teens under the age categorization of 15. also an online survey sponsored by the lottery fund, gives statistics that social class C2 consisting of skilled working class with below average incomes enjoy watching horror movies the most compared to other classes, however we have aimed to make our film approachable by all social classes.

                                                                                              

 Here i have included a psycho-graphics graph. this allows us to have an insight into our target audience and allows us to target an even more specific group of people. This is more relevant for movie marketing as knowing likes and dislikes of specific groups from this theory enable promotion to be easier, however for our movie it is still to be thoroughly considered. Physcho graphics take into consideration the behavior and averaged personalities of the audience rather than the simple typical categorizations simply by age and gender which can give very vague targeting. For our movie when sub categorizing the audience we would aim the film at the 'Explorer' audience because they often seek adventure and new things...they would be in for a thrill and sensation. This seeking for sensation is also shared by the struggler category so this audience group would too be an audience target for our film.