Target Audience?

'Audience' is possible the most vital concept throughout media studies. This is because all media texts are produced with some form of audience in mind. More often than not, if a producer is successful in creating text that an audience can understand, they make money from this audience. If something is being planned and there is no audience apparent, then it should be produced no further.
Media producers define their audience by:

- Age
- Gender
- Race
- Religion
- Sexuality
- Occupation
- Education
- Annual income
- Lifestyle

So before I actually make my short film, I need to consider my target audience, as this is who I will be aiming to please the most. Various short  films are made for different groups of people depending mainly on the genre and form of the film itself. A good example of this is is Disney, as it mainly targets young children and their families. Disney attempts to appeal to all types of age ranges, by having animated films and television shows for kids, Disney Channel and  Radio Disney for teenagers as well as films that appeal to adults as well. As well as this, Disney Land is designed to be inclusive for all members of families as opposed to children or teenagers specifically.

My project has an element of humour as well as an inner message. As I will be doing a comparison of two people's lives from separate cultures, I want to emphasise the equivalence of the characters in society today, regardless of any stereotypes that may occur unconsciously throughout the start of the film.
 Aside from the arguably intellectual sense of the film I aim to approach the situation from a light hearted and potentially humorous perspective. If I do this successfully (wish me luck) this will appeal to younger audiences, and older members of society will understand the film and message that it contains. As my film is not aiming at one particular age group I am not trying to appeal to a niche audience or a particular socio-economic group, but rather a wide range of people. By this I mean the cultural, the explorer, the mainstream, the aspirer, the young, the old and everyone in between, regardless of social status or ethnic background. Having said this, my film is for a class project at a secondary school, so I my target audience will be from ages 14-18 years old.
 Even though I am not deliberately going to aim at pleasing a specific gender, I have a gut feeling that this type of film will appeal to females more than males. This is only because the characters that will be acting for me are females themselves and I feel that women and girls in society will be able to relate to my film more intensively.