Target audience

Our film is going to be a comedic mockumentary set within a secondary school. The predictions I have made are uncertain because this genre has a very wide fan base and demographic. In general I imagine gender is not that relevant in terms of fans. Age however, is more significant because there aren’t many young fans.  Mockumentaries are usually aimed at adults, and there are many jokes and references that younger viewers will not understand. They often present adult themes, which will not be appropriate for a young child to view. For example, Borat is satirising people who make fun of different cultures. However, it may still come across as racist, because the irony comes from the use of stereotypes, and this may not be picked up by younger viewers.

Before carrying out some research about fans of the genre, I was uncertain about their political leanings.  My initial thoughts was that people who are very right wing, would be very interested in this genre in particular Borat, because the film seems to parody different races, however, they are mainly parodying people who are racist themselves. Therefore, the audience is likely to not be right wing, and my predictions were inaccurate.

I did some research on the ‘Profiles’ section of YouGov because I wanted to get an accurate idea about my target audience. The trends that I saw was that a lot of films which have one or a group of racists in them, are usually more aimed at people on the left wing of the political spectrum because left wing people tend to show a greater interest in political films. As many mockumentaries are political, they are often more suitable for people on the left wing of the political spectrum.

As with Borat, and many other mockumentaries, Yougov reveal that fans of the mockumentary genre tend to be quite left wing, which I predicted because they are usually political, like Borat.

The reason I decided to set my mockumentary in a secondary school is that I wanted to move away from the trend of mockumentaries focussing on right-wing people who they attempt to show up. Instead, I will be playing on stereotypes of teachers, who tend to be left-wing.  I hope that I will be able to parody in a successful way without making my trailer appear right-wing.

I intend to have a reasonably wide target audience for my film.  However, the main demographic will probably be left-wing as I hope to add some political moments in the trailer. Because I study in a largely boys’ school, the characters will be mainly male, which might mean the target audience is focussed upon men.  In terms of age I will focus on young, school-age people primarily because this will reflect most of the characters in the trailer. However, other comedies set in schools such as Bad Education have wide audiences in terms of age because the humour is still relevant across age-groups.

The reason I decided to set my mockumentary in a secondary school is that I wanted to move away from the trend of mockumentaries focussing on right-wing people who they attempt to show up. Instead, I will be playing on stereotypes of teachers, who tend to be left-wing.  I hope that I will be able to parody in a successful way without making my trailer appear right-wing.

I intend to have a reasonably wide target audience for my film.  However, the main demographic will probably be left-wing as I hope to add some political moments in the trailer. Because I study in a largely boys’ school, the characters will be mainly male, which might mean the target audience is focussed upon men.  In terms of age I will focus on young, school-age people primarily because this will reflect most of the characters in the trailer. However, other comedies set in schools such as Bad Education have wide audiences in terms of age because the humour is still relevant across age-groups.