The film industry has many target audiences to appeal to when creating a film as not everyone can relate to or enjoy the same type of film. This means that films need to attract a specific type of audience through a theme that the target audience would enjoy and relate to. The area’s for specifying a target audience can be broken up in to: age, ethnicity and gender.
For my specific film opening the core audience would be males of all ages (mainly over 18) who enjoy a cult status type film as the genre of film noir is not very mainstream. The product could be identified with an audience who enjoy films such as ‘Sin City’, ‘Blade Runner’ and older film noir classics such as ‘Scarface’. The film doesn’t represent women and is effectively aimed at a male audience. This is because there is nothing in the film that women could necessarily relate to as both characters are male and a recurring feature of the film is violence which is not as popular amongst women as it is men. ‘Sin City’ was a film which had a lot of balance in the area of gender. There were stereotypical women who hated the violence around them were scared a lot of the time and needed protecting but there were also women who killed and were just as brutal as the males in the film. An effective way to attract a target audience is to have characters which are relatable and identifiable to that audience. Our two characters were a detective and a killer:
Detective – A stereotypical detective wearing and shirt and tie with the top button undone. He is a 28 year old Caucasian man which is a typical feature of a detective in film noir. The location of his house tells us he is of a working middle class background which a large majority of the audience could relate to. This character is similar to J.J. 'Jake' Gittes played by Jack Nicholson in ‘Chinatown’. This character is understandable to a lot of males with stressful jobs, the act of working in to the night at home is something a lot of men and even women could relate to. With stress being a very common factor in today’s society he is identifiable on that level with the audience as well.
Killer – Wearing a typical film noir trench coat with gloves and hat suggesting he is quite mysterious and keeps to himself. This is clear as he keeps his head down when walking and is generally expressionless throughout the sequence. His costume, especially the gloves, gives an impression of a professional killer who knows what he’s doing. This is a typical character within film noir and one many fans of the genre could relate to.
The location is also an important factor in drawing in a specific audience and our opening sequence was specifically set in two locations, a middle-class house and a dark alleyway. The house is a location which many people could relate to as it is a familiar setting with everyone and the idea of someone being in your house while you don’t know is somewhat unsettling. The alleyway, however,
contrasts to this and intends to put the audience out of their comfort zone and in to an area where they would feel vulnerable and maybe even scared. Due to these feelings the audience knows that something is about to happen and the fact that they don’t know what is very gripping.
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