Who would the audience be for your product?

1. I researched into psychographics looking at a target audience I felt was appropriate for my horror film. My target audience would mainly be of the 'Armchair Rebels' or 'Funseekers' psycho-graphic as they represent people of an uncaring, selfish attitude but are also up for fun and being thrilled. Furthermore, they are more likely to be the most voracious media consumers viewing films, magazines, soaps and sport. This is due to the fact they are normally not in higher education and so are more likely to be passive recipients and so they subscribe to the Hypodermic Needle Theory in which they just take messages in without response. My reason for targeting this specific target audience would be that they would not challenge anything in the film, due to their passive responses along with the fact they are more likely to enjoy my film being of the more uncaring psychographics. They would also be more likely to use social networking such as Facebook and Twitter being gossipers so using 'word of mouth' to distribute my film among social networking. This would be an advantage and I therefore chose to target this audience due to the film's low budget which would allow my film to be marketed in a more effective way.

2. My target audience would be either male or female, although mostly males. They would most likely be between the age of 15-25 and be of the White Ethnicity as they are more stereotypically open-minded especially when it comes to horror films.

3. Pre-Production audience research consisted of a test-screening to young males of females who I felt were of the psychographics I wanted to reach. I wanted their opinions on what they thought was good about certain horror films of the same sub-genres as my horror film. I decided to ask my target audience certain questions like "what makes a good horror opening?" I received responses in questionnaires such as "music which is scary" and "the story-line being introduced as quick as possible to hook me in." I used it when planning my sequence to look for discordant music which was seen to be parallel to the action. I then summed up this research in things like graphs, 'wordles' and an Infographic to collate my participants responses.

4. To find a target audience I also researched into similar media products such as 'IT' which involves a clown to psychologically scare people who are afraid of them. I looked at ways in which the opening sequence created a sense of genre which was important as members of my target audience "want and expect to be scared." This is why I included a demon as I felt the target audience would find this antagonist scary and it would immediately construct Todorov's 3 Act Structure Theory with a disruption to the equilibrium.

5. I felt my research methods were appropriate as they allowed me to gain a better insight into my target audience and so therefore create an effective methodology to carry out effective further research into the horror genre and effective planning to create a good opening sequence which constantly attracted my target audience. Limitations of pre-production audience research were definitely the fact that even in a professional environment, let alone an amateur environment for myself, it is difficult to conduct reliable and useful research. Things like leading questions in the audience screening along with small sample sizes and the participants not taking the research seriously make it difficult for audience research to be effective. However, I do feel I was able to find a target audience based on my explanations in this evaluation.