Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Anglia Square, Car Park

Stereotypical London council
estate

 Our thriller opening, Transit, aims to target a predominantly male audience aged between 16-21 years old. Firstly, the location used in our thriller film is aimed to be identifiable with our particular demographic. For example, it features very rundown, dirty, densely populated urban housing estates buildings. This is therefore identifiable amongst the target audience as buildings in such a state as the ones in Transit are common amongst council estates, of which, approximately 30% of the UK's population live within, therefore making it likely that a large amount of the demographic also live in similar housing. In addition, the action is connoted by the particular location as council estates have a reputation for being riddled with anti-social or dodgy behaviour. This further poses another recognisable aspect of our thriller to our demographic as the audience should identify with this fact and associate the location and action to similar situations, of which, they may have heard about or experienced themselves (However, probably not to the same magnitude). Furthermore, making Transit seem more appealing.

Character from the TV drama, "Top Boy".

John, wearing very similar clothing to those
in "Top Boy"

   Secondly, the characters of John and Hanna are in the same age range as the demographic we are aiming for which gives a first basis of identification with characters. Furthermore, John is a 17 year old boy, who would be considered in our society to be an ethnic minority, his clothes are pretty much all black apart from his white t-shirt. He wears his hood up and aims to look intimidating. The fact that John is from an ethnic background widens our audience from a primarily caucasian background to a further array of different races. Jon could be interpreted as a few different characters which are both likely to relate to the demographic. Firstly, Jon could be seen as the victim as his antagonist is most likely to be Bill, the older white man. This idea flips the stereotype, whereby, usually the ethnic minority portrayed as "hoodie" usually evokes the most destruction, violence and menace. For example, the London Riots, "Kidulthood", "Top Boy". However, instead it's the older white man that is seen as the threatening and violent character. This assumption may allow the demographic to relate to our film as the media has put ethnic minorities/"hoodies" under a lot of scrutiny, exclaiming that they are threatening and destructive individuals. Whereby, one interpretation of our film would be that this type of individual is the victim and therefore it allows the demographic to identify with the feeling that everyone is fearful/discriminative of them when in actual fact they are the victims, thus making the making the film more captivating. 
   On the other hand, John's slightly unresponsive and hardened reaction to finding the dead body of Hanna could be a portrayal of the typical stereotype taken to a new level. For example, at London court recently a man was stabbed by a bunch of youths with their hoods up. The link between this news story and John is a suggestion that these individuals have no empathetic traits, in the way that they can commit or witness a horrible act and not feel any sorrow or remorse. This is supported by research into psychopathy and it's relation to deviant crimes, e.g."Lack of empathy and lack of remorse, are often seen in offenders of deviant crimes.  Lacking empathy, offenders are able to view their victims as objects, to use and throw away as they please, not unlike a piece of garbage.  By viewing the victim in this manner, offenders also seem to lack remorse for their actions, which protects them from feeling guilt", this extract is sourced from http://www.deviantcrimes.com/psychopathy.htm .
   This idea may be identifiable with the demographic as they may feel threatened by this particular antagonist in reality and therefore it could create more of a realistic character profile for John.


This video indicates how "hoodies" are seen as the victim in some cases.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/01/man-stabbed-london-court
Where as, this particular new article reinforces the extreme stereotype.

   Additionally, Hanna is an 18 year old girl of a caucasian ethnicity who's dress code challenges the stereotypical convention of the femme fatale. This is as she doesn't wear revealing clothing, has her hair short and doesn't look scared given the rather isolated situation. The name of the character was taken from the thriller "Hanna", this is as the main character in "Hanna" is a 16 year old girl raised to be an assassin in order to take care of herself. Therefore, being a rather hardened individual. Our character of Hanna poses as a strong female, which creates a role model for women as it seems as if Hanna is in charge and dictating what John needs to do, one interpretation could be that Hanna isn't actually dead at the end and she was only luring John to the hands of Bill. This therefore, could widen our demographic to appeal and identify with a female audience as well as male. Furthermore, Hanna's good physical stature and looks may also act as a sex appeal for male audiences.

User ratings for "Drive".

   Thirdly, our demographic should identify with the soundtrack we have chosen for our film as it uses low pulsations as well as fast ticking noises in order to create tension leading up to a climatic moment in the opening. The soundtrack resembles music from films such as "Drive" or "Snatch" in terms of tempo and specific beat patterns, this may pose as a relatable aspect to the male demographic as it is alike in the majority of films that they are likely to be interested in. For example, a scene in the thriller "Drive" features a getaway scene to a similar soundtrack and once investigating who rated the film most highly on IMDB I found that it was males under 18,  which is closely followed by males 18-29 years old.

   

User ratings for "Kidulthood"

    I believe that our demographic of 16-21year old males would likely enjoy other TV and Film such as "Kidulthood", "Top Boy", "Misfits", "This is England 86'", "Drive" and "Snatch". Purely because the all contain similar locations, action, character, themes and soundtrack to our thriller production. For example, the males under 18 demographic rated the film "Kidulthood" most highly.