Target Audience Research and Profiling

Target Audience Research and Profiling & My Film Rating

Having watched multiple horror films in the hope of understanding the genre and their appropriate content, I understand that they are most commonly rated either 12A, 15 or 18. These are certificate ratings which I have researched but not specifically for the genre of film which I would like to make.

Below, I have researched some horror films of these certificate ratings and am looking at what type of audiences attended and using this information to help find our ideal target audience. Once we have this, we will be able to adjust our films content so that it appeals to the attendees of horror film showings.

'Jaws' is a film that was originally released in 1975 and then experienced a re-release in 3D in 2012. The audience was very mixed on this release, maybe because it has been classified as a 'classic' of horror films and people of all ages wanted to go and see it. During this re-release, the audience was fairly evenly spread across all age groups and gender, but the 15-24 age group did have a significantly larger percentage. The male percentage was also slightly larger than the female percentage, but enough to make a difference. 

‘The Purge: Election Year’ is the 3^rd film of the franchise and was released in August 2016. It has a certificate rating of 15. The main audience attracted was 15-24 year olds who took up 66% and 55% male and 45% female audience. I suspect that the female audience is attracted by the hero role of Frank Grillo. The male audience is not deterred by the disturbing bloody violence and strong language, whereas the potential female audience may be.

‘The Woman in Black: Angel of Death’ is rated a 15 and was released in January 2015. The audience was mainly 15-24 year olds (59%) with a male to female ratio of 44:56 (simplified to 11:14.) I am surprised that the female audience is greater than the male audience. Having researched the cast members in the hope to find out why, I understand that Jeremy Irvine is an attractive male, therefore attracting a female audience. I also believe that the male audience decreased from the first movie to this sequel because the elder attractive female who attracted 27% of the 45+ audience was no longer a member of the cast. The film is rated a 15 due to its reference to suicide, visuals of a drowned body in barbed wire, ghoulish ‘jump scenes’ that are intended to frighten the audience.

Saw VI has a certificate rated 18 and was released in October 2009. This would be a good time to release a horror film as it is near Halloween. The main audience that attended were aged between 15 and 24. The percentage of male audience members was 54% and female was 46%. This is a greater female audience than I predicted so I am shocked. This means that if we make our certificate rating an 18 then we should ensure that it appeals to the young male and female adults.  To do this, we should include attractive male and female characters that the audience become attracted to. The violent content is what gives the film an 18 rating as there are frequent scenes of corpses, stabbing, shooting, emotional and physical suffering and other gore shown in great detail. There is also a use of scatological language and sexual curses (which aren’t used in a sexual way.)

I think that we will make our film rated a 15 as it will allow us to include an appropriate and effective amount of gore to go with our genre of horror. We can also reference alcohol and drugs and be able to make people appear more vulnerable by removing clothing which is accepted. Although it means younger ages won't be able to come and see it, they aren't our target audience anyway. We are still attracting the elder teenage market and young adults which is okay because they are the ones who can earn money and afford to attend.

From my research I can see that an attractive female character and the use of blood and gore would attract a younger male audience. Opposing this, an attractive male character and a lack of violence would attract a younger female audience.