1. The primary audience for our film, a basic and indeed almost all
horror/thriller films is around 15-30 years old. Younger people tend
to enjoy being scared more than older people, so horror films put
more relatable things in so that the audience can relate to the
films, which will make the audience even more scared because the
audience is constantly thinking that the characters in the films
could be them, in all horror films people imagine themselves in the
characters position. This is why people always shout at the film
telling the characters what to do even though the audience
obviously knows that the characters can’t hear them. It is their view
on the film and their opinion on what to do which is very positive
because it means that the audience is very immersed in the film.
Horror films don’t usually have a targeted age or class, all genders
and all classes seem to enjoy horror films. The audience would be
similar to mainstream horror films such as the ‘Paranormal Activity’
series, which target younger audiences and play on their fears just
like our film.
Making a horror film that is relatable is very important. When an
audience is watching a horror film they are always subconsciously
putting themselves in the position of the character. It is even easier
to put themselves in that position if the character is like them, for
example if the character is a teenaged male who plays football
then it is a lot easier to relate to the character if you are similar to
them. Producers do this a lot, they make their characters in films
very general so that a lot of people can relate to them and
therefore become more engrossed in the film.
There are several stereotypes about people that are almost always
in horror films. For example in our film the majority of the
characters are male teenagers who stereotypically are always on
their phones, on social networking sites, interested in cars, enjoy
football and other sports. We tried to interpret these and we had a
scene where one of the characters are walking along on their
phone as all stereotypical teenagers do, this makes our film more
relatable to our audience and therefore makes them more
interested in our film.
Below is a mood board for teenage males, which are featured in
our film, these are the kind of things that they are interested in and
producers will try and put in a film aimed at the particular audience: