Film Audiences

When a film is being planned, producers work very hard to establish a marketability for the film in order to attract the right audience and to make a good return in the box office.   The total size of the film audience in the UK in 2011 was estimated to be 5.1 billion (statistics from the BFI Statistical Yearbook 2012).  Therefore, when planning the film opening and storyline, I need to make sure that there is adequate research into film audiences to ensure the film will have a suitable marketability.  The most popular age group of cinema goers is 15-24.  From this, I think that aiming the film at this particular audience would attract the most people and would get the most gross profit which is an important factor to consider when a film is being planned.  A film that is similar to this film is Collateral where an assassin is hired to kill the witnesses of a case using a taxi cab for his transport. This film is similar to the plan of my own film as they both have a similar underlying theme of revenge on witnesses.  This film is also under the genre of a crime/ thriller which is also similar to the genre of my planned film.  The BBFC rating for this film was a 15 which is  falls into the age group and marketability of my film.  Therefore, this is evidence to suggest that the marketability of my film is plausible and will work as a film of a similar storyline and genre had the same marketability.  In the opening weekend in the US, the film 'Collateral' made $24,701,458 which shows that the film was not only good in itself but also, the marketing campaign must have been successful in attracting such a large number of people and hence making a lot of money in the box office.  Therefore, when it comes to planning the opening sequence, I will look at how this film was effective in grabbing the audience's attention and hence I will incorporate some of the ideas.

  Another film that has a similar genre and storyline of good versus evil is 'The Dark Night Rises.'  This film has a strong underlying character type of a villain and a hero and incorporates the crime/thriller genre.  On the opening weekend, the film made £14,362,443 on its opening weekend and its gross profit worldwide so far is $1,081,041,287 which shows the vast success of this film. Therefore, I will look into how the film was marketed and also some key features of the opening sequence that made the film so successful.  The BBFC certificate rating for this film was a 12 which suggests that this film was aimed at the audience of 15-24, the same target audience as the other film.

  From these two films, it is clear that the crime thriller genre has a successful marketability of 15-24 as both films made a lot of money at the box office and it is clear that the marketing campaign worked on attracting the audience.