Research into Target Audience

Target Audience

Coming of Age Films

 

Of all the genre types there is one that doesn’t quite fit into any other group of movies.  These movies themselves are complex and rarely made, but when they are done right they tend to bridge popular audiences and critical acclaim.  They are about people who also don’t quite fit - the coming of age film. 

The overall target audiences of these films varies but are usually always targeted at those who are over 15 as the certificates of these films are rarely below this. This is because the themes of these films are often explicit and controversial. However there are two ‘sections’ that coming of age films can be dived into; younger teen and older teens.

The subset of the genre targeted at older teens, those teens at the end of high school transitioning to “the rest of their lives” (or at least trying to) stand separately as their own class of film.  The greatest of these reach cult status, and often include all-star casts before they were to become stars e.g "Stand By Me".

Very likely it is these films that propelled the young actors into bigger roles as a next step in their careers because we, the audience, love these characters, and when we like characters we latch onto the actors that portrayed them.  Sometimes these themes cross into other genres that take over the film, such as the sci-fi film The Last Starfighter–where a teen must decide not whether to stay in town and work or go to college, but be a starfighter and save the universe. 

So for this kind of genre, the target audience is easy to identify - older teens upwards. There is a lot of evidence that coming-of-age films appeal to adults as well as the teens, for example the comments on this forum:

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a36693619/adults_watching_childrens_cartoonsteen_shows

This article suggests the tendency is so well known that films are now being made in this genre about adults who still haven't come of age despite being older:

http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/2009/06/12/20090612angst0612.html?nclick_check=1

Music-Based Films

We are also looking at a target audience for films that are based around music and bands. This list of favourite films based around bands on IMDb suggests it is a popular genre:

http://www.imdb.com/list/-lgeGOFVQZ0/

And this forum shows that these films stay in the mind:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081231215838AAzde1D

So the style of music of our fictional band can attract its own target audience. We are setting our film in the 80s, which is currently experiencing a revival and even has its own festival:

routenote.com/blog/80s-revival-festival/

Therefore we could expect an audience who enjoy this kind of music and who are generally interested in the 80s.