Our target audience is 15-24,therefore it would be a BBFC rating of 15. Through research of the BBFC we have decided this as it contains strong language, Contains strong threat and intense disaster scenes along with gory details. However younger viewer's can relate to the narrative through such things as watching films with friends and going to school, younger audiences maybe then attracted and try to reach the film through sources like downloads. The first opening two minutes don't include music for tension effects however if we were too produce the rest of the film we would include popular music to reach out to our target audience. Although our opening two minutes doesn't include any non-Caucasian characters; we hope that the narrative and youthful cast will attract some multi-ethnic audiences.
Although many horrors are seen as male gendered we also wanted to be able to appeal to a female audience. Therefore we included girls that we felt would attract the male audience by their clothes and personalities they would be signified as being heterosexual this would help with the male gaze theory. The 'male gaze' theory by feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that the film industry concentrates on the body of women rather than the skill of the actress and this is done for male pleasure. In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Mulvey calls for a destruction of modern film structure as the only way to free women from their sexual objectification in film. In addition to this at the same time we included a girl, which the female audiences can relate too and see her as a strong and powerful female, known in horror as 'the final girl', this has intertextual reference to Laurie Strode in Halloween.
In terms of class, we have decided that the socio-economic groupings that would best suit our film is C1C2DE; this is due to the idea that it is a conventional slasher and involves lower middle class characters. We feel it would reach the C1's as we are using a countertype of a strong brown haired girl, which they may be able to relate too. We recognise that the cast have regional Northern accents, however we are hoping to tap into a UK wide audience by the narrative but understand that this may affect foreign sales. However, such films as Full Monty which was filmed in South Yorkshire have been successful; with just over £2.5 million pounds film budget it made just under £2 million in its opening weekend, even with regional accents. Similarly budgeted films such as Son Of Rambow which was based in the South of England highlights advantages of regional films as it had an estimated film budget of £4,000,000.Things which could go to our advantage for filming in the North of England are such things as the amount of countryside, even though it is being filmed in the dark the audience will get a image of the surrounding areas and the outside of the house illustrates the area as well.
We would expect our audience to be fans of such films as scream, prom night and the grudge, which has a 3rd sequel coming out this year. Within our film there will be intertextual references to the film scream therefore this is something 'scream' fans can relate too and if we were to package and advertise this film we may look at the packaging of scream to try and reach out to the same audience's.
For our psychographic profile we would hope to achieve interest from both genders. For women; A wine drinking,partying, sex and the city obsessive. For the male audience; A larger drinking sexually active sky movie subscriber. Looking at recent box office films, One Missed Call is a film with similar narrative to ours; it involves a mid 20's cast and people die because of a phonecall, this relates to ours, as people will be in jeopardy because of a dream. In the opening weekend this film made in the UK £432,327, however this was an American produced film.
