Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

We found the BBFC website came in handy for our research into why films were rated as they were. The BBFC stands for ‘British board of film classification’ which decides what rating a film or TV show should get depending on several factors.

After doing some research on this website, we decided to make our thriller a 15. Below are the guidelines for a 15 rated film, taken from the BBFC website.

Threat

There may be strong threat and horror. A sustained focus on sadistic or sexual threat is unlikely to be acceptable.

Violence

Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but the depiction of sexual violence must be discreet and justified by context.

Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.

We follow the guidelines of the violence section well. We use strong violence, for example the scene where the victim gets hit with a shovel, however it is not ‘dwelling on the infliction of pain or injury’. We have used no gory scenes either with no blood at all and there is also no use of sexual violence.

We thought the age rating of 15 was appropriate for our thriller and didn’t go against anything in our narrative.  The 15 guidelines in a 15 allow strong violence and swearing with moderate threat, however with no extreme detail and gore. This works perfectly for our thriller as it would have contained violence, swearing, threat and horror. Our clip of the victim being hung therefore fits the guidelines as it contains no gore or blood. We also liked the idea of the age rating being a 15 as it's a similar age group to us. This allows us to input our own opinions and ideas as well as the public to give us feedback.

Our thriller is aimed towards both genders. We feel both boys and girls like thrillers and have no reason to segregate them based on their sex. Although they may be different genders they may have the same interests and only sticking to one gender would look good on the company and would decrease the views we would get.

Audience Profile

Age: 15 years

Gender: Male (in this example)

Film preferences and interests: Our typical audience would enjoy thrillers and tension built films. Due to their age they would be sociable going onto social websites, like Facebook or Instagram which they could find new thriller movie trailers and share them with friends.

Films and TV shows: The typical audience for our thriller would enjoy horror genres and so would watch TV shows like American Horror story. They’d also be into the violence and so would watch action TV shows or movies that also relate to law and crime. Therefore a TV they would consider watching is limitless.

For our research into our target audience, we looked at other thriller movies like fight club and Harry potter on the BBFC website to see what kind of rating it got and why. We also created a vox pop video where we went around the school asking people who are 15 a series of questions about what sort of sub genres they liked, what conventions make a good thriller and what thriller films they liked. We researched the films that people had said and researched them on the BBFC website too, finding what aspects of the film are good and why thy are rated the way they are. Doing the vox pop video helped to tell us what sort of things our target audience find works in a thriller and what thriller sub genre to use.