Research and Planning: Target Audience Research and Declaration

After deciding upon our 'fusion' of Romantic and Psychological Thriller in terms of our choice of genre, we needed to decide upon a target audience to aim our brand/product at. I conducted research by checking YouTube for who was making comments and viewing products similar to ours. I did these due to the success of using the same method in our AS Media project last year, however, YouTube has since advanced and now allows a user access to data about who is viewing the video, not just those who leave a comment. I searched for short films that matched either/both of our selected genres and chose many, including the following:


Who's Gonna Save My Soul Now


This short film focuses on a couple talking about their relationship ending. I think this has a lot in common with our film idea and also has many conventions of a Romantic genre film.

These are the three highest audience groups for views

Post-It Love


This short film is a Romantic genre production about a couple who meet in the office and start a relationship. It has many Romantic elements to it, and is similar to ours in location as well as genre conventions.

These are the three highest audience groups for views

Paradox (1 of 2)

Paradox (2 of 2)

This film is of a Thriller genre and I think that it was a lot of psychological elements and conventions within it. Also it is similar to our project due to the twist at the end.

These are the three highest audience groups for views

Overall, the most common interest in the Romantic genre came from both males and females between 25 and 35 years old.

For Psychological thrillers, the most common viewing group was males aged between 25 and 35 years old.

After finding this information out, I conducted a survey of the school's staff who where aged within 25 and 35 years of age. Again, I used a similar technique last year which proved to be effective. They were asked:

• Their favoured genre?
• Which film they saw most recently?
• Which genre of film they see most often?
• If they ever watch short films, on the internet for example?

We found that, in general, the female audience preferred films with a Romantic slant, or a story based around a couple. The men preferred films with action and the Psychological Thriller was chosen predominantly by male audience members. 

Our only issue from this research was that our dominant viewing groups didn't seem to watch shorts that much, or films that were hosted on the internet. We thought that maybe broadening our target audience to a younger age may incorporate the viewers that do not view the films on the internet.

However, we decided to aim for a target audience of both Males and Females aged between 20 and 35 for our A2 media project.