Audience Profile
Target Audience?
The target audience for our film is for the age group of young adults of age about 20 which would be the main audience although would also suite a younger audience of mid teens. This is due to the type of horror it is. Due to the film being a paranormal horror the age group cant be too low because it would be unsuitable to younger viewers. The age group cant be to high either because horror is not a genre type of film for an older audience so the main target audience would be young adults.
Rating?
Considered certificate
12A means that anyone aged 12 or over can go and see the film unaccompanied. The A stands for 'accompanied' and 'advisory'. Children younger than 12 may see the film if they are accompanied by an adult who is someone over the age of 18 who must watch the film with them. Films that aren't passed as a 12a are considered to be dark and upsetting to the audience so is pushed to a 15.
The reason behind our groups choice of rating is because the film doesn't contain explicit images or too much violence means it was difficult to prioritise a specific audience because it could be considered a 12a but other horror films are passed as 15. Due to this our overall choice was
15. It mainly contains small horror which may be frightening to the audience but is the aim of the film and not to horrific for a younger audience. The reason anyone younger than 12 can come with an adult is because there is small use of bad language which is only used on a small scene but may be unsuitable for younger than 12.
Also, our film can be considered as 12 a because their isn't much violence but there is use of weapons but not to the extent where it is unsuitable like things such as 'sexual violence' which is only seen in films of 18 .Dangerous behaviour (for example hanging, suicide and self-harming) may be present in 12 or 12A works but will not dwell on detail which could be copied or present those activities as pain or harm free. So will only show small scenes which contain this so that audiences cant pick up on this bad behaviour. Their isn't much use of this in our film but their is scenes of harm to people so can therefore be passed as a 12 rating.
Our chosen Certificate
However, most horror films are given a 15 certificate although they can be considered as 12a because of the psychological horror or upsetting nature of the film
15 certificates work stronger than 12 or 12A rated works and could include any of the following:
- strong violence
- frequent strong language
- sexual activity
- strong verbal references to sex
- sexual nudity
- drug taking
The age certificate of 15 means there aren't as many restrictions within the film and you are allowed more violent scenes which work well to make a good horror film so because of this we chose 15 to make our horror film suitable for its target audience.
Due to the gore and violence of the deaths in horror films means that the film cant be passed as 12a and are pushed to 15. So our overall choice is because of the death and blood in some scenes may be unsuitable for younger audiences. An example of other horror films similar to ours would be paranormal activity, insidious, the conjurance and Devil which are all certified as 15 which helped us decide our age because of the depth of research we did into the genre.
