Target audience research

The conjuring

The Conjuring is an Amercian Paranormal and supernatural Horror film, which was released on August 2nd 2013. The director of this film was James Wan, which also directed the films 'Insidious' and the  'Saw' films. When these films were being made they had to think how their film would appeal to their target audience and what they would need to include to keep their audience intrigued and stuck to their seats.

This is a chart to show what type of audience watched 'The Conjuring', which was collected by and from the Pearl and Dean website. These results subvert the stereotypical view of the male gender watching horrors more than women as the percentage level is lower than the women's one. There are many reasons why this could have occurred, which one reason could be that the main character was a womenly figure, which the male audience would rather have a male character being more of the main character and have more control in the film. Another reason could suggest that due to the release date, not a lot of horror films were released during this peroid of time, so this horror was a big hit. This could of be a cause to the female percentage to be higher as they hadn't seen a horror for a while due to films not having this genre. The release date was also in the summer holidays, which the target audience of this film, would be on their school holidays or off work, so would have more free time to watch films and go to the cinema. As the percentage of the female audience was 54% and the males was 46%, it shows that this film was more popular with the female audience than the males.

The ages in the results, shows that their target audience was mostly ranged from age 15 to age 24. Having no percentages below the age of 15, automatically shows that the certifacate of this film was a 15. Having this as their broader target audience, follows the stereotypical target audience for a horror film as they are usually aimed at this age group; this could link to the popularity of females watching it. Having a 15 rating allows there to be scary scenes, gore and more adult scenes, which follows the conventions of a horror film.

The class rating for the film varies from different classes. AB stands for upper and middle class, C1 stands for lower middle class, C2 stands for skilled working class and DE stand for working and non working class. As you can see the highest rating in these results are from C1 as it is 46%. This suggests that the lower middle class watched the film, which could be their target audience. This could link to the rating as ages 15 and above are beginning to apply for jobs or are working at their jobs. This suggest that these working people may have watched it to escape the reality and the stress from their jobs and to relax watching a film, which could be real or not. Due to the release date, this may have affected the results as this target audience may have had a lot of free time as the release date was in the summer meaning they could go and watch this and enjoy it. Classes AB was the lowest percentage, which could be due to them being in a much higher class than C1. This could suggest that class AB prefer more intellectual and true stories and the genre, horror, are not their kind of film to watch. DE has a percentage of 18%, which could be because they are a non working class meaning they have more spare time to watch films. 

From this research, it suggests that the target audience for an ideal horror should be for ages 15 and above. This is because we can have scary and gore elements to the film but would still be suitable for ages 15 and above. Also having this age certificate for our film would allow us to have the broadest target audience, which would bring more profit to the film, and appeal to a larger range of people compared to an 18 rated film.