Who is our Audience for Our Opening Sequence? Evaluation Question 4 By Esme

Who Is Our Target Audience?

The main target audience for 'Concealed' will be aged 17-28. This is because the all the main characters are of young ages, the audience may therefore empathise with the characters because they are young like them and may have similar interests or personalities to the characters.

The fact that the main character is a female will create more of an attraction to young girls. Not only that, but stereotypically girls are more emotional and the film, being a psychological thriller conflicts the mind. Also there are some elements of romance again appealing to a girl target audience. Males will be the secondary audience because they will be attracted to the small element of action, as the dominant ideology of males is that they are more physical than women and also more aggressive.

The social demographic of our primary audience will be students who fall into the 'E' group. This group will be the main target audience down to the fact that the main characters are students and they are at a similar age to the audience.

The audience will be extremely sociable, popular and like going out with their friends, just like Anastasia and Dylan because again the audience will like the main characters instantly as they can see that the characters are like them and relate to them. Not only that but it also instant creates dislike for the antagonist. The antagonist has the complete opposite personality and is very socially awkward and distant from others. Therefore the audience will find him very weird from the beginning, this action code will also suspect that he is the antagonist.

According to Young and Rubicam's audience type theory, the primary audience will be 'The Mainstreamers' as they will be teenagers that like being part of a group and like to fit in. It could also attract the group The 'Aspirers'. This is because our audience like the main characters want high status and have high status. They consider themselves to be liked or known by a lot of people and care about what people think. Although the characters are not like this, their group of friends are and the stereotypical popular group in school are very materialistic and care about what everyone think.

When looking at Blumler and Katz uses and gratifications theory, 'Concealed' will provide entertainment to the audience. The audience will be entertained by all the events that take place in the film and also by the tense wait of finding out if Anastasia will escape. During the equilibrium the audience may be provided with 'escape' because of the romance between Anastasia and Dylan. They may not have any romance in their life so the relationship between the two characters will provide this sense escape for the audience because they will feel romantic.

They may enjoy films in the thriller and horror genre, films such as:

'Saw'
The fact the characters are kidnapped is similar to the plot of 'Concealed', also they are then tortured. Anastasia isn't exactly tortured, however she does constantly have violence inflicted on her. Both our film and 'Saw' feature violence and action. Perhaps this film applies more for the secondary audience of males.

'Hard Candy' The main character is also a young girl, she is younger than Anastasia. In this film she gains dominance and tortures an older man after accusing him of being a pedophile. The primary audience of females could enjoy this because of the fact that the female character is taking the lead, therefore rejecting the common convention in media products of men being at the top of the social hierarchy and women being at the bottom.

'Se7en'
 Similar in the sense that the antagonist's identity remains unknown for a lot of the film, engaging their minds more and encouraging them to become an active audience and try and figure out who the antagonist is.

Audience Research

In order to know if our planned audience liked our idea and if we chose the right target audience we conducted a questionnaire based on our initial idea.

• It really helped us get an idea of what the audience would think about our idea and if we had produced an idea that would attract the audience we intended on attracting. We asked them questions to do with themselves and what they thought of our initial idea for 'Concealed'. 

• When looking at the results we noticed that all the people we asked like our idea for the film opening. They liked the idea of Damien being obsessed with Anastasia and that he wants her all to himself, so goes to drastic measure in order to have her.

• They liked the fact that antagonist's identity is kept hidden for a little while, they felt it would be more engaging and it would encourage them to figure it out for themselves. Also they would feel like they want to keep watching to find the answers to all their questions.

• They really praised the flash forward idea. They felt it would instantly grad their attention if the film went straight into action.

• The younger audience that we asked said that they like the fact that the film is based entirely on teenagers. They thought it would make it more exciting and that they would be able to connect with the characters a whole lot more.

We also did some research on the conventional target audience for thrillers. We found out that:

• The age is usually older, so 18+. Purely because there is a lot of violence involved and the characters can possess some serious psychological problems, which younger viewers may find scary or disturbing.

• There is usually not a specific gender that is targeted because of the varying characters, both genders have someone they can relate to. 

• Generally this genre has quite a widespread audience because there are many Thriller sub-genres. Although Psychological Thriller is one of them, audiences who enjoy one sub-genre of Thriller will usually like another.