Research into the Most Popular Target Audience

From watching several teaser trailers and viewing numerous film posters and magazines we have learnt many factors of how media producers create each individual product for mainly just a select target audience. Whether or not something appeals to yourself or whoever, there is in nearly every case signs in the production work to determine what social or age group the product is made for. From visiting sites such as IMDB and reading forums that have various content from promoters themselves, we have learnt that the most popular target audiences for not only thriller (our desired genre), but as a whole is the age group of 18-35. This suggests to us that the film industry feeds mainly off the adult population, making the available content vast and wide spread for film makers.

Once finding this fact of the most popular age group we discussed this as a group, thinking twice about this statement we went onto do some initial research of a particular film industry, the Hollywood film industry. Looking into some of the later products to have come out of Hollywood we see the ages varying but mainly on the decrease, as films are becoming more appropriate for younger audiences in the eyes of Hollywood showing some films under the age of 12 that would have otherwise been a 15 several years ago due to their content. An example of this could well be Pineapple Express which contains many scenes of drug use which in previous years could well have been classified as a 18. This shows us that the target audiences and the content the public is exposed to this day and age has been desensitised, by the graphic content being released making the ideology of target audiences being less of a key role as such in the film industry especially in the United States.

Also, we wanted to debate the fact that 18-35 was the most popular target audience, as it seems that animated films have featured strongly in the film industry, from the likes of Disney and Pixar they have created timeless classics in childrens cinema and the U rating. In contemporary film we are now seeing more children rated movies that are commonly being viewed by adults, including Rango, Where The Wild Things Are and The Muppets 3D. However, as we are wanting to focus on the Thriller genre a higher certificate will be necessary as it will show scenes that could be psychologically disturbing to younger audience.