Target audience and BBFC

The age group that our media product is targeting is about 15-19 years old, as our film has a similar aged cast of which this age audience (youth culture) will easily be able to relate to whilst sticking within the BBFC ratings.

When we compared it to the film 'Adventureland' on the BBFC website our film had much the same criteria for the classification of a 15 which were that it 'contains strong language and soft drug use'(directed by Greg Mottola) as did 'The boat that rocked' which 'contains strong language and moderate sex references' (directed by Richard Curtis)

After this comparison with other BBFC rated films we felt confident in labeling our short film opening as a 15, as our film 'contains strong language and soft drug use'.

Our film opening does only include a Caucasian cast however we feel it'll appeal to a wide range of ethnic groups as many mainstream productions continue to sideline mainstream talent, but don't seem to suffer commercially for this, its therefore gained a hegemonic status.

This film is primarily aimed at the female gender as the cast are all female and our genre is social realism which usually appeals to the more educated viewer (ed reading) which females generally are when looking at GCSE grade statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1892
'Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view' (Schroeder 1998, 208). We took the male gaze into account in having 2 different representations of women 1 appealing more towards females (sensible) the other more towards males (sexually available) i.e. an attractive girl wearing a low cut top or short skirt.

The class profile of our characters is generally C2DE, meaning that it will appeal to those classes as they're more likely to be able to relate to the issues tackled but without ignoring the more sophisticated ABC1 audience as they will find it easier to watch without being boring as it may require some partial ed reading.

Our cast are from Yorkshire so do have Northern accents which may make it difficult in the box office rating as theres not much cross-over appeal, so we would at least aim for the UK-wide audience, as we don't maintain a hegemonic status.

Distributors such as 'Working Title' would be a good company for distribution of our film as it maintains strong brand loyalty after the success of films like, 'Billy Elliot' and 'The full Monty', which are both set ,up North with Northern accents and of the genre social realism. However if distributed by Warp-X we would probably only do well up North where the audience can relate easier to the film such as that fate of the film 'This is England', (set up,up North, with Northern accents, genre:social realism).
Some films that could be linked to our film, to help communicate the ideas behind it are; 'Kidulthood' in that they're both social realism films , with the same aged cast and both aimed at the youth culture, we could also refer it to 'Wish you were here' as both films have females as the central protagonist, both include a teenage pregnancy, aimed at the same audience and are social realist films, all these features from the 2 films will help the audience to identify to ours in that their fans will want to see our film.

Unfortunately we were unable to directly target the 'pink pound' besides the revealing clothing worn by the girls as it wasn't applicable for our particular social realism film.

Our typical would-be-punter is likely to be a typical female teenager (aged 15-19), under age drinker, sexually active, within the socio-economic group of C2DE, likely to be placed by the media in 'hoody' or 'chav' stereotype/culture.
'Maslows hierarchy of needs' as its basically a pyramid system hierarchy for motivation, it has many levels and all levels must be completed before a state of self-motivations reached.
This links to my target audience as psychologically my consumers are likely to be in the 'safety/love and belonging levels of the pyramid, as they may not be in a loving satisfying relationship or be in steady employment. My film relates to people in this level as the characters in the film are also in this level and deal with similar issues relating to 'Maslows hierarchy of needs', so the audience are more likely to feel empathy with and understand the characters and their story.
The characters in our film and a lot of our target audience therefore lack self motivation so are unable to move on emotionally grow or mature they're in a mental state of paralysis.