Question 4: Who would be the audience of your media product?

Here shows my previous post on audience consumption habits - the contents of this post is a questionnaire explaining the and gender of my chosen target audience which is relevant to answering this question is quite useful to have on hand to refer to if you wish.

In the beginning of my research and planning I created a questionnaire (my audience consumption habits research) in order to find out what kind of genres people were generally most interested in. Once I had printed out my questionnaires, I handed them out mainly to people in my media class (as I can trust their opinions and honesty when it comes to media) as well as a couple of friends outside of my media class. this therefore means that my overall age group was only between the ages of 16-19, therefore this was my target audience. However since the age ratings go from 15 to 18 years of age, I had to go for the age rating of 15 because I didn't want to have to disincline the 16-17 year olds information from my questionnaires because almost every single one of them was filled out by people in this age group, therefore I had to go for the age rating of 15.  I am also very glad that I went for producing a film that was aimed at people in my own age group because it meant that I could apply many things to it that I myself enjoy and it also meant that I had a much better understanding of what people in my target audience really want to see when they watch a film. 

Also, a 15 seemed suitable for my film opening since I wanted to create a film with elements of the thriller genre, therefore I knew even in the  very early stages of the research part of my blog that there could potentially be some horror, violence or gore in my film, which would not be suitable for people under the age of 15. However, I never chose to go for a male or female audience because I myself feel that in most cases, a lot of films will appeal to both men and women, so I didn't want to try and appeal to just one because I would have probably ended up appealing to both of them to some extent any way. Also, because I tried to get my film opening to appeal to both men and women it meant that I was able to have double the chance of my films success. In saying this this I mean that if the film was ever distributed to TV, cinemas or DVD, then it would have double the chance of being sold because both men and women would buy it (as men and women make up roughly half of the population in all areas). Also, as seen in my questionnaire, both men and women mostly gave the answer that they sometimes use film as a form of personal relationships with people (one of 5 elements to the uses and gratifications theory by Blumler and Katz), meaning that both men and women in the age group that I am targeting would potentially speak about my film with their friends after seeing it, therefore spreading the word of my film around and increasing its popularity.