4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience for the film 35+ years. These are the people who spend most of their time and money in the cinema. As shown in the table below from the “Pearl and Dean” statistics website.


We have targeted our film towards this audience by paying homage to some of the great film noir classics over the years such as John Hustons “The Maltese Falcon” or Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. We chose the film noir style because as our target audience is older they are more likely to be interested in this sub genre of film.
We have given our film a “Film noir feel” by doing a number of things:

1. Location- we have chose our locations carefully in order to create the right mood and atmosphere within the shots. We have a scene set under a bridge. Its dark, full of graffiti and wet. This creates the perfect atmosphere, not just for the style of the film but also for what’s actually happening in the particular scene (The exchange of some unknown goods in a suitcase)

2. The effects- Using Adobe after effects I was able to make a fine smoke and lay it over the film. A trademark of noir films is the fog and mystery surrounding them, and it’s something I believe we have been able to recreate very well.

3. The plot- many noir films contain the plot elements that we have incorporated into our film. For example, Criminals, Violence, mystery (The suitcase) and death.

Yet whilst aiming for the 35+ audience we did not want to exclude the large chunk of the viewers aged 15-24 and 25-34, we have done this by updating the noir genre by including homage’s and references to more popular films that we expect the younger audience to have scene.
A large chunk of the 18-34 year olds would have seen films such as Reservoir Dogs (1992 Tarantino’s writing, acting and directing début) and Pulp fiction (1994 academy award winner). We have included references to both these films.
When the unnamed prisoner (Ryan Wetherby) is sat tied up on the stool being harassed by the psychotic gangster (James Taylor) some viewers may realise a similarity to the scene in Reservoir dogs in which Mr.Blonde (Michael Madsen) tortures a cop, Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz). We also see a mysterious suitcase (of which the contents are never revealed) passed around many times throughout the film. The very same thing happens in Pulp fiction.
At this point it is worth noting that all the pre-mentioned films are American. Given that our film is British and set in England it would be more comparable to a film such as “Snatch” or “Lock, Stock and Two smoking barrels ” with a darker noir twist
In conclusion the target audience of our film is 18-35 year olds who are fans of crime films such as Pulp fiction or reservoir dogs
Ben