Evaluation Question-4

What audience would your media product appeal to and why?

The target audience for our media product is 16-24-year-olds. Mental illness affects people of all different ages, however after conducting research into this we found that this age group is least educated when it comes to mental illness awareness, as a group, we aimed to use this topic to show the younger generation how important it is to talk about mental illness. The interests of our target audience when it comes to films are listed in the mind map bellow:

Here is the survey created for our audience research, we conducted the research ourselves and drew conclusions from the collated results. From the research conducted the results show that most our target audience would genuinely enjoy or be interested in a film with the theme of mental illness within it, as 100% of our respondents said so. Just over half of our respondents said that they are often interested in the soundtrack of a successful thriller film, meaning the soundtrack of our film is crucial for our target audience. 90% of our respondents watched thrillers, or films in general - on online websites such as Netflix as opposed to purchasing the DVD, showing a clear form of globalisation  13 of the respondents also said they find non-chronological films more "interesting" and "engaging" as only 2 of the respondents said they are sometimes "hard to follow/keep up on". Now looking to our final product I can confidently say that the product we have created still fits nicely with our original target audience of 16-24-year-olds. 

The main reason for this would be the age of the two main characters being within the range of 16-24 themselves. Linking back to the mind map above, our final product is in keeping with the interests of our target audience as the opening is powerful and condemned and keeps the audience full attention, the character are unique and interesting and the whole plot of the film is one that 16-24 year old may be able to relate to as many young people are becoming educated and more familiar with issues regarding mental illness. To further this target audience we could have made some small adjustments to our media product such as a fast-paced soundtrack to increase tension within the audience, however we decided as a group that although the main goal for us was to appeal to our target audience we did not want to give too much of the plot or suspense build up away within the first two minutes of the film so decided to leave the opening very calm and tranquil and as the film continues the tension will again build up and leave the audience waiting until they get the answers to their questions brought about by the opening sequence. Comparing this to a real media product such as the recent film Split, a similarity between the two would be the target audiences. With both films being aimed at the same target group of around 16-24-year-olds as older viewers may not find the distressing scenes as interesting and ultimately enjoyable as the younger portion of society.