Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

Prior to filming our thriller opening our group did exstensive research into what our target audience, 16-24 year olds, would expect when watching a thriller film and the stereotypes they expect to see. Upon researching I found a statistic claiming 16-24 year olds are one of the largest age groups to suffer with mental health issues. By using someone of this age not only does it show the demographic that relates to the statistics in relation to promoting these mental disorders but also the age range could appear as though we can correlate with a young teen audience. In my research which I collected through an internet survey I found that a significant amount of our audience would want to watch a thriller that mentioned/discussed mental health, due to the majority of previous films have spoken falsely or they mis-interpreted how someone with the condition might act. I also felt it was right to speak about mental health issues being apart of the death because of the stigma that surrounds Schizophrenia such as the lack of empathy, it is made clear in the narrative that he does feel sympathy but yet is unaware of how to convey his emotions to others. Lastly I found through research that the majority of our audience watched thriller films through streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime closely followed by just watching in the cinema. By using a service such as Netflix it would mean using a cross- media convergence to achieve a synergy - this is when a cross media convergence is successful.

In relation to gender, making sure that our media was targeting both females and males was pinnacle as our plot of the film was based on the audience being unbiased.  The main topic of our film is neutral as it can be subjected towards male and females because the plot surrounds mental health issues which are experienced by both genders. The physical violence in our media could appeal to men and the domestic abuse could appeal to women, due to statistics of domestic abuse being higher in women than in men. As for males although the rates of them abusing there partner is higher (29%) the rate of suicide is more prominent with men suffering mental health issues at 76% causing suicide to being the biggest threat towards men, figures are currently highest they've ever been. By making our thriller opening we hope to ensure to highlight the key aspects of suffering with Schizophrenia to highlight that the stigmas surrounding this issue are not true.

With regards to various social classes we have explored a variety of ways to indicate to the audience that this is thriller opening is something you can relate to therefore making it appear more scary in the long run because of the likeliness of something like this happening. The main characters that are seen in the duration of our opening can quite clearly seen as average stereotypical teenagers. By the setting and the costume the audience can already understand that this is supposed to relate to day to day life due to them being dressed in very ordinary clothes. Additionally the use of them not wearing bold colours and not being dressed up indicates a middle class/ working class lifestyle. However a clear juxtaposition can be seen when we introduce Lucy's character who plays the female detective at the end because of her Lanyard seen around her neck creating the illusion that if she's wearing her job may be important. Also the use of wearing navy could symbolise stereotypical hierarchy jobs such as the police. Lastly the mise-en-scene where Lucy's character is already suggests she may be working for a hierarchy job because of the scattered candid shots of Lucas and recent newspaper articles surrounding a previous case.

Additional Research consisted of myself an my media group getting our class and peers to watch the opening to see what the initial reaction to the editing of the shots to see if the understood the plotline. The majority were able to understand that there was a previous altercation (flashbacks) that may or may have not led the female character to die. However without the running narrative within the soundtrack they wouldn't have understood he had problems. There are some pros to this piece of criticism as we tried to make Lucas appear as normal as possible so that the audience would be shocked to find out he had a mental health issue - the added touching of the face and constant hand trembling was also an addition to help them understand. A film I have been focusing on during my media research is We Need to Talk about Kevin'.This is just one of the films I chose to look at as of me previously watching was intrigued by the idea of this boy having a clear problem coping and also being a teenager. The use of the colour red throughout the film Is what I was captivated by because of how they managed to subliminally use it to predict the outcome otherwise known as pathetic fallacy.These dark themes such as death an mental health issues are often not spoken about as people with the condition either feel embarrassed to speak about it or society doesn't want to know.