Audience Analysis

Understanding

People will go to see horror movies expecting be come out freaked out and scared. Not only would they be expecting this but they would most likely want this. They go to see horrors for the fun of being frightened by what they see so after watching a trailer, if they don’t think that they are going to get this from that film, they probably won’t watch it.

The audience for this genre know the general content of a horror film. They know that gore will be used on most occasions, the possibility of supernatural storylines, the way that the film will seek to make the audience jump and be shocked by the images that are put in front of them.

Another thing that the audience would expect to see is the types of characters in horror films. They are most than likely going to be stereotypical horror characters in every horror film you see. For instance, the scared weak characters (more than often played by a female), the strong male character who takes charge (sometimes but not often played by a woman) and the evil characters in the film. The evil characters could be ghosts, zombies or anything supernatural or even human.

The audience would know, roughly, to what degree of gore and horror there will be by the certificate given. They would probably be more interested in films with a higher age certificate if the aim is to be more scared during the film.

Interest

Like I said above, people who watch horror films go to them to be scared so hopefully people would watch my trailer thinking that this is what they would be getting out of it. The more creepy and mysterious it is, the more likely they will respond.

As my target audience are for those who have a general interest in the supernatural, this would be another factor for why they would view this film. They would probably already have a fairly good knowledge of ghosts and other things paranormal so would enjoy seeing this portrayed in a film.

I would think that those factors I have mentioned in the audience profile would contribute to why they would see this film as well especially age. I believe that because the age group of the people in the film is 15-25, my target audience which is also 15-25 would feel like they can connect to this more. The same goes to education levels. The people in the film are students so students in my target audience would, again, feel like they have something connected to the people in the film and feel like it is more aimed towards them.

My film is being done using a handheld camera. This is a growing method in film making, mainly in the horror genre and is being more and more popular with it audiences. I think that, as this has been reflected in my trailer, people would go to see this film. Whether this is because they find them scary or just want to compare them.

Environment

There are many different ways to advertise the trailer these days. These are virally, such as sending the video through email or on websites (YouTube), during TV breaks or at the cinema before a film or in the foyer. I would advertise my trailer using all of these methods as, this way, there would be more access to them so would be more likely to grow my audience.

For viral advertisements, I would use YouTube to show my trailer. This is a free to upload this video so wouldn’t cost me anything to do this and is a widely used website so I know that people would see it here. People also use this website, solely to look through film trailer to see what they want to watch.

I would use the TV break to advertise my film. I would put this trailer late at night, either on a film channel or in between programmes such as ghost hunters or most haunted as I know that my target audience would be watching these channels. Due to the content and certificate of my film I would have to put it on a late night showing.

Lastly, I would put in on in the cinema trailer parts at the beginning of a movie. I would choose to put it at the beginning of a film that has the same genre or actors as my own as those watching it would probably be my target audience.