When thinking about our target audience, there is one main thing to take into count, our genre. Our film has a genre which could be described as an action thriller along the lines of films such as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Tinker Tailor". A while ago this genre would mainly be assumed to appeal to a male audience but recently there is more awareness that a lot of women also read these thriller genre books and see the films. As all these films are based on books that have been popular, there is an audience out there and it is a mix of male and female. The age range starts at around 17 but it doesn’t really have a limit on age, there isn’t a certain age where the interest in mystery stops. This is because of the puzzle dynamic these books and films present, everyone loves to try and work out the ‘killer’ which creates a sense of interactivity which is why these films and books do so well. So while most research into target audiences focuses on demographics, I do not believe this is a particularly useful approach in this instance. For example, while it is tempting to say "The Girl..." was aimed at a younger audience, I am not sure this is true - I think it was aimed squarely at the reading audience, the many who had read the book, without much worry about the age of the readers. So many films are now based on novels (Twilight, The Hunger Games) or other source material e.g. comics (The Avengers) and TV shows (21 Jump Street, The Inbetweeners) for exactly this reason - as demographoic profiling becomes more unreliable, tapping into an established audience is a logical thing to do.
The best way to attract this audience is to get straight to the mystery in the trailers and posters. Once the sense of mystery is shown I believe this target audience shows a sense of interest. On posters this can be done through stills of scenes which get the audience thinking ‘what’s happening there’ and shocked faces of characters within the poster. Also, character posters are a good idea as this is a book adaptation so people are always interested to see whether the filmmaker had the same ideas as they did whilst reading the book. This creates a tease element which also promotes audience engagement. It is also key to make sure people know that the source material will be respected - if you liked the novel, you will not want the film to stray too far from it.
When researching target audiences I came across a couple of theorists on the subject. The one I partly agree with is Fiske and the active audience approach. He sees each audience member as an individual and that ‘there is no such thing as a target audience’. I don’t agree with the latter, but believe his point of an audience member being individual is something to take into account. I believe this because no one likes the idea that they can be grouped in with a bunch of other people, they like to feel different, so if our promotions feature little clues and hints at ‘secret’ stuff we capture all the individuals. The theorists Blumler + Katz and Silverstone also put forward interesting ideas when they see the audience as a ‘user’. Within this they say the audience has 3 reasons for seeing a film: entertainment, escapism and social bonding. To attract this audience we need to show excitement in our trailers, this can be done with short glimpses of actions scenes. The majority of the time it is those short action glimpses that get people talking. It involves the audience in the play and performance that Silverstone thinks is more important than just consumption these days.
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