Audience

In the specification we stated that our audiences was going to be students (16-26). However as we got our story and got a better idea of what story we wanted to tell it became clear that the audience we targeted wouldn’t relate to the characters and the position that he finds himself, this doesn’t mean they won’t but when thinking about the different characters and the change in the story we have this new target audience in mind.

We changed our target audience to post graduates from university as they could understand the situation that the character finds himself, they could relate to the story and see what story were trying to tell, as this demographic is the most likely to fell the effects of the recession. This target audience is also more likely to be able to find this film as we are distributing the film on the internet using youtube. This group is more likely to find it this way as they are staring to watch more and more films using the internet, according to a survey conducted by The Uk Film Council. Our plan of action to get our film to our target audience is to send the link to the movie to friends and family that have resently come out of university or are still in it and then hopefully a snowball effect will be created by doing this way. This approach means that our film will be seen by our target audience and with no cost.

Our audience theory is the Reception theory. This theory best suited our film because it states that the audience should be looked at as individuals and how their individual circumstances affect their reading of the text that is presented to them, these circumstances could be gender, class, age and ethnicity. This is how we want our audience to behave to, we want our target audience to feel a certain about the characters because they are relatable to them and be able to understand the text, this is known as preferred reading. We will use the audiences expectations of the text to relate it to them, that way they can form their opinion. What we don’t want to do is the Hypodermic needle theory as we want to tell a story that the audience can look at and understand the message that we are trying to get across, rather than be hand given the message and change their opinions to ours, what we want to do is to allow the audience to get their own ideas from the text presented.

Another theory that we looked at was the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs which stated what people find most important to them such as basic living being the lowest need just to survive, then going on to safety being the next most important thing, safety in terms of security of the body, employment, health and property, the next level was Love and belonging the belief that love and friendship is what we want, after that was Esteem, confidence self-worth is something that we need, then finally it is Self-Actualization, morality and creativity, what drives a person in life is something that we all find most important to use. This theory relates to us as we are dealing with the safety part of the theory in terms of employment. We want the audience when watching this film to realize this aspect of the story and empathize with the character. The safety aspect of the theory is one of the lower needs so is something we need to survive which we should try and get across in the film to the audience.