5. How would you attract/address your audience?

We looked at a number of techniques in our planning to attract a specific audience to come and view our film opening. With our film being classified as a 15 this meant that our film is primarily going to be seen by the 15-24 age bracket. Therefore, we looked into the type of characters in our film that we believed most of the audience would be able to relate to and moreover be attracted to come and view our film. For example, having a young teenage actress playing the eldest daughter, this enabled us to attract certain people of the same age and of being given the same responsibilities from parents (looking after younger sisters). Next, our father character would have attracted a slightly elder generation of cinema-goers to come and view our opening, as they can relate to his situation of looking after children and the panic which sets in when one is kidnapped. A niche audience that we have considered for our film to attract to is that of cinema-goers who are keen on thrillers, and having looked at our results from a recent questionnaire that viewers of our film opening filled out, we were not wrong:

A key part of attracting and addressing an audience to come see a film is that of a good advertising campaign. A well known advertising technique to draw in an audience early on is teaser trailers released up to a year before the general film release. Taking into consideration the 15-24 age bracket that is our target audience, we would want trailers to be shown after the water-shed, in advert breaks of a big show (like X-factor), where the majority of our target audience will be watching. Other methods of attracting our target audience to go to the cinema and see our film, is through inviting representatives of the niche audiences to go to preview screenings of our film and in turn beginning the “word of mouth” cycle which will address a much wider audience. In my opinion, the internet plays a big part in addressing an audience as it is available worldwide and is easily accessibly. For that reason, I think creating fan pages for our film and an official film website will engage our audience and attract others to come and see the film.

Below is a bar chart showing what influences those people questionnaired to go to the cinema to see films:

Having analysed our questionnaires and looking at these two graphs, we can determine the two areas which we would focus on for addressing our target and niche audiences. Therefore, in conclusion, advertising on the television, a good set of actors to play characters which your audience can relate to, and a good campaign which draws people in to go to the cinema to see your film - varying from technologies like the internet, or old fashioned magazine/newspaper reviews. Advertising our film as a low-budget british film, but also in the same way and same places as a high-budget hollywood film will specifically address our target audience.

 JK