This document discusses the target audience for a media production called Apparition. The primary audience is identified as 15-24 year old, heterosexual, white females from a C2-E income bracket. Web 2.0 is seen as the best way to attract this digital native audience. Feedback from a questionnaire showed that the opening sequence was engaging and grasped the audience. Areas for improvement included making the narrative more understandable and relatable. Based on the feedback, the secondary audience may be changed to females rather than males. Overall, the target audiences seem appropriate.

1. WHO WOULD BE THE
AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT?

2. PRIMARY AUDIENCE
• 15-24
• Mass market
• Heterosexual
• White
• Female
• C2-E income bracket

3. This is still an appropriate primary audience as our below the line marketing techniques are
perfect for this age group. Using Web 2.0 is the best way to attract this audience as they are
the digital natives. Also this is a less sophisticated audience therefore the fact that our
narrative is simplistic on the surface is suitable for them.
Our narrative is simplistic in the fact that there are conventional and
simplistic characters (protagonist/antagonist), as well as it having an
equilibrium (at some stage in the film, the protagonists past would be shown
enjoying life with her late friends) and a disequilibrium. However, it becomes
more complicated if it is looked at in depth. We focus on the social issue of
mental health which is a serious topic, and we reject the convention of a new
equilibrium, as the audience will be left unaware of the identity of the
antagonist. Our protagonist is a female therefore females are the right
gender to primarily target as they would find more things relatable than men
would.

4. SECONDARY AUDIENCE
• 25-35
• Urban intelligence
• Heterosexual
• White
• Male
• B-C1 income bracket

5. This audience is still appropriate for our production as a secondary audience. Our
representations that are more sophisticated (about challenging representations regarding
excepted power structures to do with race, class and privilege, and ideas about mental
illness) are suitable for this audience because it provides them with more than just a simple
narrative to follow. Also, the intellectual pleasures that our production will provide regarding
the enigma about the antagonist is something that would attract this more sophisticated
audience. We chose males as our secondary audience as there is a suggestion that the
antagonist is a man. However I think that this wasn’t the best decision as men would not
relate to any of our characters. There is nothing to directly attract the male audience and we
do not target them particularly well in our production. I think a better secondary audience
would have been females as there is a large focus on females in our production.

6. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
We created a questionnaire online for people in our target audience to answer and tell us what they thought of our
opening sequence. We put this questionnaire on our Facebook pages and had our friends and family answer it as they
covered both audiences (males and females, different income brackets etc.)

11. WHAT THEY LIKED
From this survey, we found that the audience thought
that our production was engaging. Almost 94% said
that they wanted to watch the whole film because the
opening sequence had grasped them so much. 84%
said that they would recommend the film to other
people to watch. This introduces the two step flow
theory because if someone who is considered an
opinion leader recommends our film to a group of
people (e.g. a YouTuber praising the production in a
vlog), then the opinion followers are likely to go and
watch our film. 86% said that they thought that the
music was effective. The increasing tension in the
score was parallel to the increasing tension in the
video therefore it only added to making the audience
fearful and nervous.

12. We are very pleased that 90% of the people said that
they liked the fact that the protagonist was female. Our
primary audience is females because we thought that
this would make it more relatable and that seems to
have worked. However there is an issue with this as it is
reinforcing hegemony about females because the
female in the production is actually weak and
vulnerable. 83% said that they liked that the characters
were of a similar age to them. Our aim was to ensure
that the audience felt connected in some way to the
film and with the female protagonist and teenage
characters we have done this. Finally, the simplicity of
our production was praised with 87% liking it. We
didn’t want the complexity of the narrative to be
obvious as our primary audience wouldn’t recognize it,
however this does suggest that the idea of multiple
possible antagonists, has been missed.

13. WHAT THEY DISLIKED
39% of the people who answered our questionnaire said that the opening sequence wasn’t understandable.
Although this is a large minority, it’s important that the narrative is understandable. Therefore if we were to re-
film our production we would need to change a few things in order to make it clearer as to what is happening.
For example, we could show some shots of the protagonist with her friends before they died to show her
emotional connection to them. We could also have some more shots to show the distress of the girl (like the
bedroom shot) so that the audience know she is being tormented by something. However, this is only the
opening sequence so the rest of the narrative would become clear in the rest of the film.

14. OVERALL
Overall, the audience were pleased with our opening sequence and said that they
would want to watch the rest of the film. This proves that our production is engaging
and exciting, making the audience want more.
I would argue that if the opening sequence is slightly confusing, it only makes you want to watch the film
more in order to understand anything that didn’t make sense. Also, 70% said that they didn’t find the
production relatable. I think this makes sense as the focus is on the death of four teenagers. However it is
clear from questions 7 and 9 that they liked the choice of characters because of their similarities to the
audience.

15. WOULD YOU CHANGE YOUR TARGET
AUDIENCE BASED ON THIS AUDIENCE
FEEDBACK?I think that it might be a good idea to change our secondary
audience to females rather than males as there is not a lot in our
production to attract the male audience. However, overall I think
that our feedback was very good and Apparition is popular with
our audience. Despite the fact that the majority said that they
didn’t find the production relatable, the choice of characters
proved to be good as the female character and age of the other
characters was popular. With our primary audience being 15-24
year olds and females, it subconsciously connects the audience
to the characters, which is why the audience was pleased with
the casting.

16. OUR CERTIFICATION
I think that the certification of 15 is perfect for our film because:
1. There is a psychological and external threat which is proven to kill. Also the idea of a psychological
threat is a real issue so it’s not to be taken lightly.
2. Some of the behavior in the film is imitable, for instance, the pool scene. If young children were to view
the film and witness the drowning of the teenagers, they could copy this and create danger for
themselves or other people. This is an example of the hypodermic syringe theory as the young children
would simply accept what they are being shown without questioning it.
3. Our target audience is 15-24 therefore there is no need to adjust the certification because our youngest
audience is age 15.
4. There are no A-list actors in the film that would draw attention from the younger audiences. The film
would not appeal to them because of the lack of recognizable faces.
5. We also follow the BBFC guidelines for a 15 rated film (no endorsement of discriminatory behaviour, no
encouragement of drug misuse, a lack of strong language, no nudity or sexual activity, and no violence
that dwells on the infliction of pain or injury).