Target audience
The heist/crime genre is written around a group trying to steal something. These films generally cause the audience to root for the people stealing the object even if they are criminals. The actors who play these characters are generally well known and loved so people will want to see the film.
The target for this film is both women and men as the women enjoy these films due to the males playing the main roles and the men enjoy these films because of the idea of the money involved and how they pull off the heist. They are also likely to be from the ages of 26 to 34 roughly.
In our genre people will want to watch it as they would like their lifestyle to be like this, it is full of action and appeals to those who like the technical side. Our first two minutes will be appealing to people who enjoy action and heist/ crime films.
They are also enjoyed by those who enjoy a film with high production values and a distinct sense of style such as ‘Ocean’s Eleven.’ This film is liked by both sexes due to the fact it has style within the film, from the way it is filmed with a slightly grainy texture and lots of use of contrasting lighting, to the way the actors dress and hold themselves. The overall visual look influences whether people like a film as the hesit film has quite a 'cool' feel and this needs to be reflected in the production, filming and acting.
It was quite hard to find specific target audience figures as it is a hard topic to find out information about, especially now the UK Film Council has been scrapped. As long as the film includes a lot of twists and turns in the story and has a good villain and involves a lot of money the viewers enjoy it. Most articles around this genre focus on why the film is appealing rather than who watches it, therefore I would conclude that having a taste for this kind of film is seen as more imnportant than any particular age group or gender deomgraphic.
In our research, we found it quite difficult to identify a clear target audience for our kind of film. On the one hand, we think that defining a target audience is necessary in all kinds of media industries because audiences are becoming more and more split up and a lot of success now rests on niche audiences. On the other hand, the film industry seems to be all about big audiences, and at the very least you need enough people to see your film to get back the money you have spent on it.Assuming that the actors playing the parts in real life are a wider range of ages than we have managed to show as we had to act all the parts ourselves or with the help of sixth form friends, this can broaden the appeal, and heist films don’t seem very age-specific, unlike horror films for example, which seem to attract a younger audience. We also thought that although some genres do seem to be of more interest to some genders than others (e.g. sci-fi is more associated with males, although we know there are dedicated female fans as well, and rom-com is more associated with women), heist films don’t seem to have an obvious appeal one way or another. The mix of action and humour and the variety of male characters will appeal to male viewers, but the same applies to female audiences as well, who might also find many of the male cast attractive (George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the Ocean’s films).
The article here says it is the 'cool' factor that appeals to audiences about heist films:
In this article, the idea of the thrill of for once being behind the criminal is discussed. Heist films let you support characters who would normally be seen as villains and so can give a subversive thrill:
http://ezinearticles.com/?When-the-Bad-Guys-Are-The-Good-Guys
I agree though with this article from the New York Times which says that we all enjoy heist films because we know that however carefully the gang lay their plans, something will always go wrong and we enjoy waiting for that moment and watching them try to get out of the mess that is created:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/movies/02raff
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