How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Just like the last question (and the rest of them), our teacher broke it down into a more simpler concept. That concept would be audience engagement techniques and distribution. I have written down in my notes how to approach answering this question.
If you cannot decipher my chicken scratch, it is ok. It is an acquired skill that my teachers eventually learn throughout each year I'm unfortunately in their class. Here is what the notes say if you are not trying to read all of that:
- Discuss how you arrived at your target audience - cite necessary research
- Discuss how your production choices, content, etc. work to engage with your target audience
- Next, discuss how you plan to make your film available to audiences
- Response should address realistic options for an amateur filmmaker. For example, you would not release your film worldwide to theatres, this is only an option for major productions.
Alright, you got all of that? Good.
Target Audience
For how we arrived at our target audience, I once again cannot use the research for what I have blogged about. Let me do some quick research on dramas then...
That, in fact, was not quick. Little did I know, drama is very difficult to research when it comes to target audience. Drama is a very widespread genre and usually covers a vast range of topics. Each topic may identify with a different target audience so it is a little hard to get a definitive answer. It also is typically combined with different types of genres which further complicates this research.
How it feels looking for any reliable information related to target audience in drama films:
I did (after an hour of searching) find SOMETHING that was not an AICE Media blog or Wikipedia page that I could actually reference. In an article focusing on target audience as a whole, I found the following statement "The 25-39 age cohort exhibits a broader spectrum of preferences, leaning toward a mix of action, comedy, drama, and romantic genres." I have finally found it. I feel like I have discovered Atlantis or something. Let me get into actually answering that question now...
Based on my research, the age range of 25-39 is what the typical drama film attracts. This is because drama resonates more with mature audiences that enjoy emotional and thought-provoking productions. Since our project is centered around a young adult, and in the last post I mentioned relatability pretty heavily, I would say the target audience for our film would be young adults. So that would be around age 20-25. That may be a little bit younger than the typical drama target audience, but this is more of a fast-paced production focusing on the time loop side of things while still maintaining character development and deeper themes. With that being said, let's move on to how our production choices engage with the target audience.
This opening throws you straight into the conflict with the time loop occurring a little over a minute in. Now I am not going to lie, it is turning out to be a little faster-paced than planned, but this is the best we could do with the clips we got from production. I still am proud of how it flows, though. The quick pacing, relatable protagonist, and crazy scenario she is put in all contribute to engaging with the target audience. The quick pacing is more suited to a young adult audience since a more active scene typically resonates with this group more. The relatability of our protagonist would pull in similar age groups, which is seen all around the film sphere. People feel more connected to others that they can relate to, so naturally this would be the case when it comes to the target audience of our project as well. Scenarios like time loops resonate with 18-24 year olds since they "often translate into a love for adrenaline-pumping action films, sci-fi adventures, and fantasy epics." This age range further aligns with the target age range of 20-25. Time loops are a sci-fi element and the implementation of this loop within the production supplements engagement with our target audience.
Distribution
If we are thinking about distributing this film to others, we need to realistically think about our options. As I mentioned in my notes, "..you would not release your film worldwide to theatres, this is only an option for major productions." If we take our target audience and budget into consideration, I only really see one option for distribution: YouTube. YouTube has the most potential for success if we want to get our film out there since it is completely free to upload on it and it's the most suitable platform for our target audience.
As you can see, around 37.3% of users' ages range from 18 to 34. A good portion of that is our target audience, as well as the general target audience for drama as a whole. With the knowledge that such a good portion of people on this massive social media platform fit our target audience, it has the most chance of engagement here rather than other social media platforms. Plenty of other short films have been uploaded to YouTube in the past, and independent filmmakers who posted them have made a name for themselves through this distribution tactic. If our film were to go at least somewhat viral, we would have a following that we could keep hyped for future productions. This would be the perfect way to begin our journey as independent filmmakers, and if we did get any traction, it would boost us for each new production afterward.
This post will also serve as a nice guideline for when I make my script for the CCR. Things are prone to change in the final product but, generally speaking, I will have the same kind of answers for this question.
Sources:
- Paolo. (2023, December 21). Movie Audience Demographics: Insightful Study Data. Gruvi. https://gruvi.tv/post/movie-audience-demographics/
- One Hour Later... | SpongeBob Time Card #122. (n.d.). Www.youtube.com. Retrieved May 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXcMV-d_2Js
- Oberlo. (2024). YouTube Age Demographics. Oberlo. https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/youtube-age-demographics
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