Our target audience for the film would be men aged 35 and older from social classes A/B, as research shows they have the greatest interest in film noir. Only 10% of cinema goers enjoy the genre, and within that group men aged 35+ make up 13%. An interview with a representative of this demographic revealed he enjoys elements our film contains like suspense, plot twists, and jazz music. He dislikes genres not included in our film like romance films without significant plots. The BBFC 15 rating was also chosen to match this target audience.

1. Question 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our media film is ultimately aimed at a rather older audience, as they might be more familiar with
the genre of the film. Our demographics state that the audience that would be most attracted to our
film would be men aged 35 and older, who are in the social class A/B (this includes occupations such
as: teachers, lawyers, doctors, bankers etc).
We chose this audience as our genre is one of the oldest film genres that have gradually become less
popular, moving the market for a noir film to a more niche audience. After analysing data from the
UK film council (http://lewishodson1412.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/media-coursework-identifying-
target.html#comment-form), we found that it was these demographics that found our genre most
appealing, as they find the conventions of the genre more interesting, or they can remember
watching films of the genre when they were younger. Only 10% of people who go to the cinema
would enjoy watching the genre, and only 1% who would say the genre is their favourite. Of the
original 10% of the audience, the gender by age that watched and/or enjoyed it more was only 13%
of men aged 35 or over. In addition, of the 1% that found the genre to be their favourite, 2% of them
were also men aged 35 or over. However, this did not completely narrow our audience down to just
the one given by the UK film council, as there are a lot of elements in the film and the genre that
may still appeal to a minority number of younger audiences, who are possibly familiar or never
watched the genre before.
When deciding our film audience, we also needed to consider our
BBFC classification, meaning the age rating that we found to best
suit our opening. From our classification, this ruled out any possible
audience under the age of 15, as we thought this would be the
better age rating considering our main issues
(http://lewishodson1412.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/media-
coursework-age-classification.html#comment-form). This did help
narrow down and establish our possible options for target
audiences, however, were not entirely necessary we could have
followed the average classification of most noir films.

2. As noir began to become less popular, many major cinemas began to stop showing them, and
instead, the genre was left to more independent cinemas. Because of this decrease, both in the
number of cinemas showing noir and the numbers in audiences (10% of cinema goers), this brought
the genre into targeting a more niche audience as time moved on. This was evident from our
research into the UK film council information and looking into different film distributors for our film,
as there were quite a low percentage of audiences who enjoyed the genre and very few existing film
distributors that specialised in noir. This had a fairly large effect on establishing our target audience,
as it narrowed down the number of the public who would be generally interested in our film.
During our research into different film audiences, we interviewed a likely member of our target
audience, Mr Healey. He is aged 35+ and due to his occupation, falls into our preferred social class
and gender.
Mr Healey is generally interested in most music styles,
especially jazz music, included in old fashioned films, such
as our chosen genre. This is also that is enjoyed with a
modern blend to it, for example, mixing jazz with techno
to add a new yet old effect. His TV and film preferences
also include something that has elements like suspense
and plot twists, and especially likes detective stories, as
you can follow with the deductions as the plot develops. A
few examples of this included CSI, Sherlock Holmes
stories, Blade Runner. His dislikes in terms of the
questions we asked him, was more modern music such as
pop and R&B, and hates TV and films that include
romances that have no significance to the plot.