Evaluation - 5. Who would be the audience for your media product?

When constructing my thriller sequence, I had to think of the audience and how they would react to certain aspects of my thriller. I decided that my target market would be the D&E group from the ages of 15-25. As a method of researching the target audience I gave them a questionnaire to fill out. I chose this cluster of people for a variety of reasons. One of those being that thrillers appeal to this collection of people the most and are the most likely to go and see my thriller as they had the highest percentage of yes' at 80% on whether they would see a thriller movie with their friends.

My target audience are those who fall into the D&E category. This group of people will be made up of students and the working - class. My theory of the audience leaving my thriller sequence feeling satisfied was confirmed as I got a great deal of positive feedback from the people, who fell into the D&E category, from my questionnaire as they appreciated the codes and conventions that were adapted and used in the sequence by giving it 4 stars overall for quality.

Another reason for the people in the D&E category being my audience would also be due to the protagonist I used. It was important that I casted a protagonist that was in the same group as my target audience (D&E). This was vital to my sequence so that my target audience could relate to him and recognise the situation he is in. I set about doing this through many methods of representation through age, gender, lifestyle and others. Firstly, I cast my protagonist male because it is normally the male side who would be attracted to a thriller film more than the female audience. My questionnaire shows this as 3/5 of the males like watching thrillers whereas only 1/5 females like watching thrillers. This means that the majority of people who see the thriller would relate to the protagonist through their sex.

Secondly, I made sure my protagonist was the age of the typical student, 17 as shown in picture 24. The fact that my protagonist falls into the same age group of my target audience, 15-25, is significant as he lives the same lifestyle to the target audience. This convention is used in many thrillers, for example, Final Destination, Scream and Prom Night, these thrillers also contain a lot of horror conventions. As the audience are a similar age this allows them to sympathise with my protagonist as they understand what he has to go through in his day to day life. This also engrosses the audience into the film. As this is aimed at people in the west, this is an advantage as this also helps the audience sympathise with the protagonist. Another feature of the protagonist is that he is wearing typical clothing for his age, gender and social group. He is also wearing branded clothes such as the british brand, Jack Wills as shown in picture 23, underneath the jumper. Seeing as he is wearing what the typical D&E person would wear, this could represent the social status of the character (student) as he is wearing similar clothing to what his peers would wear. This encourages the viewer to sympathise with the protagonist even more as he has similar lifestyle interests to them.

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