Research - Film Audiences

Kellie Ward

A film audience is... what it says on the packet; any person that consumes/watches a film, whether the film-makers planned for them to or not. They can be anything from a film critic, to just a civilian. Including any race, age, gender, or location. They are put all together as a group and defined as an audience.


A target audience is... a specific group of people that a film aims to reach, either within a certain range of age, or gender.
Specific/target film audiences are often determined by the genre of the film, as it is sometimes obvious which type of person would be likely to enjoy it (e.g. more females are found to enjoy Romantic movies than men) so it is often easy for film teams to allocate a target market.

The table below shows from research (surveys) the ages and genders of people consuming certain films, so as I said... it is never very time consuming when it comes to establishing who you think will watch and therefore apply the most money for the film to be profitable.









A big part of reaching your target audience is marketing. Because not only do the producers have to know who the target audience is, but so do the general public, in order for them to know if the film suits them and entice them to watch it. Marketing subtly lets the public know this through advertisements...

1. Colours - Things such as billboards require little amounts of text and more visual elements for people quickly passing by/surfing the net so, the colours on the advertisement determines the type of people who will be drawn to it. For example... the Skyfall billboards were only black and white, as their target audience was males. Whereas children's movies like Finding Nemo involve much more colour.

  2.  Location of the advertisement - If you want your target audience to know that the film exists, you obviously have to put it in a place where they will see it. This could be putting it in a physical place that you know a person of that age/gender/type would be, or on a digital format, such as TV channels. Notice that children's films are mostly advertised on children TV channels, and Musical films are advertised on music channels, or near record stores such as HMV. 

                                                                                      Children's animated movie A Fairly Odd Movie being advertised on children's TV show channel Nickelodeon.

Musical movie Les Miserables advertisement outside HMV, aiming to
 reach the attention of music lovers.

Target audience for thriller films
Age is the biggest part of thriller target audiences, most are 18+ because of explicit content such as violence and the psychological disturbance it would cause younger people. However all thrillers differ and some have a lower age for their target audience, depending on how strongly the stereotypical genre comes across.

Aswell as the thriller genre, target audience also depends on the sub-genre. For example, supernatural thrillers would probably be watched by mostly young people looking for a thrill, and things such as political/crime thrillers would be enjoyed by the older generation, specifically males.