Evaluation Q2 - How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as…

To identify my target audience:

I went to youguv profiles LITE to find more information about the type of audiences who like to watch horror thriller that centres on doll. I selected two profile from searching ‘the boy’ and ‘child’s play’. Each are horror thriller of dolls, similar to my opening film.

Both are horror thriller and mystery.

‘The boy’ is a movie about a women who have to take care a child of the couple in the big house. And the child she needs to take care turns out to be a doll, which she doesn’t like it and refuse follow the rules given by the old couple.

‘Child’s play’ is a movie about a toy named chucky that’s possessed by a murderer spirit and kills people.

These are the two types of people I got from searching:

Most people who see these kind of films are women, and are about 25-39 or 40-54 years old.

Their favourite movies are similar in terms of supernatural, thriller and mystery, however, the younger audiences seem to have more interest in horror supernatural with darker poster and more violence than the older audiences, which involve more mystery and humor.

After researching about the movies from each type of audiences, I learned that the younger audience like to be expose to more violence and murdering.  By comparing the child’s play (the movie I use to search up this profile) to my opening, I think that this might not be my target audience, despite the similarity of the sub-genre.

Reasons why they would like my film?

• Since my film has a doll as the main ghost character, which is what most women had one in their childhood, so they might be able to relate to the film.
• Secondly, the first character showed in the opening is a young girl, which they could relate to.

The older audience, however, have their favourite movies that are similar to my opening (except for ‘the legend of Tarzan’). The movies are more of mystery, and some are also watchable by children (Ghostbusters).

 Reasons why they would like my film?

• My opening introduces several mysteries around the girl character such as how did the doll get inside? Why is the girl alone?  Why didn’t she question about the existence of the doll?
• The narrative is not too hurried (most scenes are in the girl’s room) corresponding to most the audiences’ personality, which is patience.

How some element in the opening engage with the audience:

How it would be distributed:

Cinema: I don't think my film is set up to be put on the big screen where there are many people watching. I think the audience will get their best experience through watching alone in their own house dimming the light to nearly turning it off combine with silence. In addition, looking at the target audience, most of them are still working, so they might not have that much time to go to the cinema.

The disadvantage is that the movie has its show period; it cannot be on the cinema forever. And the way to get the movie to be on the cinema is that it have to be good enough for the distributor

Online: so if they don’t have much time to go to the cinema, they might have time to go online to watch some movies in their rare free time, which doesn’t required time to travel to the cinema and can also select where to watch the movie; with small group of people or even alone. This is also convenient for the audiences, since they can choose the time to watch and pause the movie whenever they want.

CDs/DVDs: distribute it to the retailers with some kind of promotion such as a small art cover of the movie. These are what my target audience of more than 20 years are familiar with more than internet, which just started to become popular since year 1999.

Distributor: or I could find a distributor to do the distribution of the movie for me. Which will make things easier in terms of finding target audience and the time to release the film, since they are already specialized in this field. However, I also need to make sure my film is quality, unique, and interesting enough to get their attention.

Deciding on a release date:

The release date should not be the same date as the big films from the well-known companies to increase the recognition chance. I first thought that it should be release on Halloween which is all about scary stuffs, but the film is not really about ghost (by what I mean is that it involve on more mystery). So, I chose to release the movie around September that doesn’t have much going on, such as traditional festival. This means that the consumer will have less choice and people which are not my target audience might decide to watch the film to kill time.