1. Question four and five, Who would be your target audience for your media product?
How did you attract/address your audience?
The chosen target audience for our media product was both male and females who are
unemployed or in education. We looked for some recourse material and found out that
many people at the age of 16-32 enjoy watching thrillers, we then found out why both
genders specifically like the thriller genre. What we found was that women aged 16-
32 look for men that are seen as strong, or tough in a thriller and example of this
would be Batman as he is seen as strong, rich and good looking, but we challenge this
idea by having the main focus for the female audience being on the main character
Vanessa, we targeted it at them as because Vanessa is still young and has lost her
parents there are many people who may watch this that are a part of a split family, this
could intrigue them as they see it as something they can relate too. There is also the
idea that some of the audience are in their 20s to 30s and at this point in time may
have children of their own so they could feel a motherly love for the character of
Vanessa as she no longer has parents.
For the male audience of thriller films this is opposite, this is because studies have
shown that men like the idea of a female character being seen as week as they would
feel like it is their job to protect them, this would accept the idea that men like to see
girls that need assistance but the older portion of the viewers in their 20s to 30s may
be more interested in how the older character Samuel is being portrayed, they may
feel disgusted by the fact that this old man is following a young girl and taking
pictures of her, much like how the mothers may feel motherly love towards Vanessa
the men would rather protect her from the dangers around her.
The main reason as to why we targeted people who are unemployed or in education is
because- like the main character- many of them may be dealing with family issues on
top of school issues, this would appeal to them as it makes them feel like they can
connect with the main character as though the reasons may not be the same they feel
like they are able to share what someone else is going through.
We attracted the audience through the narration of the story, having the main
character be a female makes the audience feel confident that this character is going to
be able to do something that will shock them, this is an effective method as used in
The Hunger Games where the character Katniss volunteers to be a part of the Hunger
Games in place of her sister, this is something that would make sense to the audience
as it is for her sister, so because of this I believe that having a female be the main
character will be able to let the audience feel like it’s not just the men that are the
main characters of films.
Another thing that we did to attract the audience was have the character Samuel be
creepy and strange, not quite what you would see from a main character that is so old,
most of the time older characters are seen as wise or knowledgeable but in thriller
older characters are more creepier and are more mysterious, that there is not much
known about them. The character Samuel Crook is meant to play into this as he makes
the audience question what his motives are and why he is following Vanessa.
