Understanding why an audience consumes any type of media is very important in order to know how to categorise and target them for your specific media type; in this case it is film. Blumler and Katz suggest that these ‘uses and gratifications’ are important for identifying audiences. There are a number of reasons why people watch films the most obvious one is entertainment, this simply means they want to watch it because they find it interesting and it passes the time. Therefore our trailer has to deliver action and pace to ensure that the audience will assume they will be entertained. Another reason people watch films if for escapism, this means you’re completely immersed in the film to the point that you forget everything else exists. People may want this experience for many different reasons: depression, boredom even stress. Again, we have to make sure that our trailer emphasises the puzzle element of our film as working this out would be one of the main escapes provided. One of the biggest reasons why people watch films is because of the social bonding elements, this means people will go and see a film to enjoy time with their friends and become closer whether it is going to the cinema or going round an mates house it’s not about the films it about who you watch the film with. We therefore have to make our film appear as if it is going to become popular or a social trend. Basing a film on a best-selling novel is one way to do this as you know there is already an existing audience.
Some people take the idea of entertainment and escapism further and relate it to the actual viewing experience. Silverstone says there are three levels of this entertainment and escapism: number one consumption ,oldest pleasure; to be able to enjoy something you first have to consume it whether it be watch, read or listen. Second is play, the idea that some people like to pretend that that fantasy is real which links in with the implosion stage of the media world talked about by Baudrillard. This involves pretending the film is real, for example by reading the blog we provide as part of our promotional campaign. The third level is performance, actively doing something yourself, the recreation of things from that fantasy world like fan fiction and tribute videos and parody. This is a type of hyper-diegesis. These last two levels are considered relatively new pleasures, and we would hope that our audience would engage in these activities. once our products were available online
Targeting audiences can be split up into two main viewing points; they are the idea that there are active audiences and the idea that there is a passive audience.
Active audience is the idea that audience can’t be grouped together because we are all individual with our own views and opinions. A theorist called Fiske suggests that people cannot be put into demographics because of our individuality and our ability to choose. He also says people resist some media text because of the amount of choice we have in this day and age. The way he summarised it is by saying there is no such thing as a target audience, there is only audiences meaning each person and classed as an audience. We therefore need to see our audience as a collection of individuals. This is why our teaser campaign has many elements, to hit as many different people as possible.
Passive audience is the idea that people are different but can be grouped together in to certain categories. A large way of doing this is the demographic approach which some theorists like Ang argue is too old fashioned, it involved grouping people by age, gender ability and social class. I do believe that is a bit old fashioned because from my experience just because a person is the same age or gender it does not mean they will definitely like the same things you do. Also there is no longer such a discernible gap in gender tastes (I think it is old-fashioned to suggest that action thrillers appeal more to men) or in generational tastes (as now there is not such a clear divide between old and young, and what was once seen as middle age is now still young).
Another and slightly more up to date way is by categorising people in the VALS approach, VALS stands for Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles. This way categorises people by how they think and what they enjoy. Our film idea is in the genre of a psychological thriller; our audience would be very varied, but we would be aiming at both genders because this genre is generally popular with both genders. The age group we would try to appeal to would be 15 -35 these people are called the golden demographic because these people will probably be young enough not to have a family they have to take care of giving them even more time and disposable income. We would cater to their expected tastes by having action, a fast pace, an attractive cast and a strong mystery element as this is always popular.
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