1. Primary Audience
The primary audience for Star Wars: The Force Awakens
will be adults aged 30+. This is due to the fact that they
grew up with the star wars films and therefore will
predominantly be watching to see the continuation of
the story line as opposed to the secondary audience who
will be more interested in the action and excitement
contained in the recent Star Wars films.
This audience will be made up of more males as the
earlier films do not have any important female characters
for women to identify with other than Princess Leia. This means that although some women
may have been part of the primary audience, the majority will be men.
Regarding the 4 C’s scale, this audience would fall into the mainstream category as their lives
typically revolve around their job. Also this audience is most likely to be C2 or above on the
NRS scaleas they are adults who will have their own income and independence and therefore
are capable of supporting themselves financially. This means that they have more spending
power than the secondary audience so they could afford to immerse themselves in the Star
Wars fandom through things like merchandise and comic con. There will also be some of the
“hard core fans”in this category who literally revolve their lives around the Star wars fandom,
this means the majority of their disposable income will go into merchandise, and Star Wars
events.
According to Dennis McQuail’s uses and gratifications theory (1983) one of the reasons this
audience will watch The Force Awakens is for entertainment (diversion). This means that they
use the film as an escape from their everyday lives such as their jobs. Another reason this
audience will watch the film is because of integration and social interaction (personal
relationships) this is applicable because audiences will have known these characters for years
and years so they have built up a connection with them. The final use for the film for the
primary audience may be Personal Identity as this audience will be able to identify with some
of the characters from the older films such as Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo and Princess Leia.
Secondary Audience
2. The secondary audience for Star Wars: The Force Awakens
tends to be younger people from the age of 12 up to people in
their 20’s. This is due to the fact that the films age rating is 12A
meaning that the film may not be appropriate for younger
viewer, and anyone aged21 and older probably will have grown
up with the older films and therefore are more likely to fit in
into the primary audience category. These people are more
likely to be interested in the action than the continuation of the
story lineas it is exciting and interesting to watch and they were
not alive when the original films came out.
In the more recent films there is also more of an equal split in
the gender roles within the films as opposed to the older films
where the only female character with a large speaking role was
Princess Leia. Therefore the secondary audience will have more of an equal gender split as
there are far more important female characters that the female audiences can identify with.
The fact that one of the main roles (Rey) is a strong female role model will also help to make
the force Awakens more appealing to them.
Regarding the 4 C’s scale,this audiencewould fallinto the explorer category as they are young
and inexperienced, so they will constantly be learning and discovering things. Also this
audience is most likely to be between D and E on the NRS scale as they are mostly children,
teenagers, or young adults who live at home and are in full time education meaning that they
will be relying on their parent’s income or have very low wage part time jobs. This means that
they have minimal spending power so they may not be able to afford all of the merchandise
that the “hard core fans” (part of the primary audience) can.
According to Dennis McQuail’s uses and gratifications theory (1983) the main reason this
audience will watch The Force Awakens is for entertainment (diversion) This means that they
use the filmas an escape fromtheir everyday lives such as school work or family. Another use
for the film may be Personal Identity as there are many characters that younger audiences
will see as role models or people to identify with.
Survey monkey
Here I have created a survey that I asked as many people as possible to fill out, in order for
me to find out more about the relationship of the audience and our case study film.
Who is the audience?
3. Here we can see that although the audience still has a male majority, it is far more of an even
split with a 46% female audience. This shows far more women watching the Star Wars films
in recent years as opposed to 40 years ago when we saw mostly men watching these films.
Therefore I would say that the secondary audience would consist almost equally of male and
female audience members as opposed to the Primary audience, which will be predominantly
male.
Favourite characters
Female audience member Male audience member
Rey Kylo Ren
Rey Hans Solo
Poe Fin
Kylo Ren Hans Solo
Chewbacca Fin
R2-D2 Poe
Rey Kylo Ren
Fin Fin
Kylo Ren Kylo Ren
Fin Chewbacca
Fin Kylo Ren
Rey Chewbacca
Kylo Ren Kylo Ren
Chewbacca
Here we can see the characters that appealed best to the female and the male audience.
The female audience’s favourite character was Rey. This isn’t surprising as Rey is the first
strong female character in a main role within a Star Wars film. The force awakens was also
when we really began to see a rise in female audiences watching the Star Wars films which is
a clear indication that this audience is looking for personal identity when watching the films
(Dennis McQuail’s uses and gratifications theory 1983).
4. I believe that the male audience is also looking for personal identity within their favourite
characters as their favourite was Kylo Ren. This could be reflective of the fact that most ofthe
people I got to do my survey were part of younger audience, so therefore they are drawn
more to the younger characters.
Here we can seethe levelof
education that audience
members have. As the
Primary audience are older,
they have achieved higher
levels of education such as
Foundation and Bachelor’s
university degrees as well
as apprenticeships.
Whereas the secondary
audience have completed
their GCSE’s or A-Level
qualifications. This means
that the secondary audience will currently have a lower spending power that the Primary
audience who are more likely to have a higher income.
From this question we can see that the primary audience were far more interested in the
storyline and the old characters as they would have watched and grown up with the films so
they are far more emotionally invested in the characters. Moments within the trailer that will
apply to this specifically could be things such as the first appearance of Hans Solo as he is
telling Finn and Rey that all of the stories are true, and when we see the millennium falcon.
However the secondary audience mostly chose the action and the new characters as the fast
paced action scenes are what will capture their interest and as the new characters are
younger, audiences are able to identify with them. Moments within the trailer that might
5. appeal to this audience could be the introductions to Rey, Fin and Kylo Ren as well as the war
scenes where we see lots of planes and the storm troopers with guns.
