Target audience and BBFC

We decided to rate our film 15 as the themes and context could be deemed as inappropriate for an audience which is any younger. But things such as piracy and downloads may make this inevitable, but a rating needs to be applied for the box office and when it goes to the video store. The source www.sbbfc.co.uk showed us the guidelines to which films have to stick to in order to fit into that classification and we also compared it to other films similar to ours in terms of themes, language, nudity, sex, violence, imitable techniques, horror and drugs.

The is only a small amount of nudity in our film. When the protagonist is in the bath, she is covered up but the audience know that she is naked because she is in the bath. We decided to have the character naked in the bath as when characters are naked they are most vulnerable. Following BBFC guidelines, "the violence in our film is strong but does not dwell on the pain and suffering of the victim." The same applies to imitable techniques, as self-harm is included but it is not dwelt on and you can't fully see it, but the audience knows what's happening. We also had to consider laws such as The Video Recordings Act 1984 which requires there to be

"1.No harm to any of those likely to view the video.

2.Any harm to society through the behaviour of those viewers afterwards."

The 2nd factor here could be debatable, as it has been argued that violence in films is what society is influenced by in a real life setting.

Due to piracy etc. we have targeted our film at the youth audience of 14-34 as the characters in our film are reflective of our target audience from there age. Even-though they are all the same age most horror films generally target the youth audience.
Our production doesn't include any non-Caucasian characters, but if we did this would reinforce its appeal to a multi-ethnic audience . However, this does not mean our text only targets a narrow Caucasian audience as many other productions continue to sideline non-Caucasian talent and still are successful. Such as Donkey Punch is a successful british horror which just feature white characters.

The slasher genre is typically a male dominated genre but to avoid only appealing to half of the target audience, a tough, resourceful 'final girl' character helps to draw in the female audience. Many films such as Halloween with Laurie Strode, Donkey Punch with Sian Breckin use the final girl theory. The final girl is not present in the 2 minute opening but in the rest of the film there will be one. The protagonist is like a 'scream queen' character apart from the fact she has brown hair instead of blonde. We did this to give a polysemic meaning to make the audience think she's the final girl then be shocked when she gets killed. Also, we didn't go along with the stereotypically blonde girl as it is often looked down upon by feminists but by doing this we may have lost some of the 'male gaze theory'. We considered the movie-as-date factor as the couples going on dates are predominately teenagers so even though horror films target males more, there needs to be characters which the female audience can relate to. There is a contrast between the two male characters as the first male is seen as 'geeky' and could make the female audience sympathize with him as you'd expect to see a boy splitting up with a girl not the other way round. The antagonist is big and strong, emphasizing his masculinity, so the male audience may aspire to be like him. This is similar to Micheal Myers in Halloween as he to is big and strong.

From our research into Horror films we found that most horrors are aimed at C1C2DE which use stereotypes, but as we have used counter-types this may bring in a ABC1 audience. Also as it is using middle class characters and a middle class setting this will also guarantee a middle class audience. To bring in ABC1s we could have used a adult for them to relate to but because of the time restrictions, we didn't.
Even-though Northern films struggle a lot at the box office we still decided to keep with the northern accents and settings as there isn't a lot of dialogue in the film anyway. However, there is advantages to using southern English characters and settings as it has an hegemonic status. Films such as Notting Hill, which is set in London, makes it accessible for a UK wide audience to relate to as its the capital of the country, therefore making it successful. Using northern England stereotypes could jeopardize the foreign sales as the southern England stereotype is normally the one given out to other countries. But there are successful Northern films which have overcome this such as Full Monty and This is England as the main themes in the films are accessible to all audiences. For example, the main theme in the Full Monty is unemployment, and the main theme in This is England is Thatcherism ( a prime minister which has been described as a dictator) Warp X and Redwave films chose such broad themes as everyone can associate to a time where they or there country has been unemployed or had a high unemployment rate, and the audience all know of a country which has had trouble due to the countries leader. After considering our options, we still decided to keep to keep our northern accents as we don't see it as a great problem. Also, if we had decided to use southern accents, then there would be the problem with sounding realistic etc.

We would expect our target audience to be interested in films which are similar to ours, especially the horror classics. Such as Halloween, Scream and Friday the 13th. This may be because these films are the ones that got our target audience interested in horror films in the first place. Friday the 13th and Scary movie are films which carry out the post-modernism theory, as they both recycle ideas from other films. Post modern films tend to target a younger audience such as 14-24. Our promotional poster has reference to Scary movie and Halloween as it has a knife going into a bra.

We decided to have Theo, the boy that the protagonist splits up with, as he would bring in the 'pink pound' audience. Because he is 'geeky' and they may think he is cute.