Target Audience

We want our target audience to be unisex, aged 16 to mid 20's.

Considering the supernatural element to our Thriller-Horror (ghosts) we understand that in current times younger people seem more attracted to films and TV series involving the supernatural. This involves the 'Twilight' saga and hit TV series 'The Vampire Diaries'.

Poster from the Twilight saga's first film

Poster from The Vampire Diaries TV series 1

I myself have watched both and, as a teenager, I understand why myself and peers are attracted to this.
Both 'Twilight' and 'The Vampire Diaries' have young attractive male actors that appeal to their young female target audience. Inspired by this, our film also has young actors, which is more appealing for our audience as they can relate to similarly aged characters. 
However, we didn't just want our audience to be young women because our film has more variety; we have a male protagonist who is weaker than the supernatural - our female ghost. This highlights that humans are weaker than the supernatural also subverting the expectations of the 'dominant' male gender. In addition, as our ghost is female, is supernaturally stronger and threatens the male protagonist she subverts the expectations of the 'subordinate' female gender; connoting a gender power struggle. This power struggle is designed to intrigue a unisex audience through the conflict of gender and conflict between the supernatural.

I understand the relevance to our TA and have researched the NRS social grades:

NRS social grades

Our setting was originally in Central London targeted at  a B-D grade audience. However, both complications with filming and realisations of the change in setting helped us understand and develop on our target audience more. Now, our setting being in Camden, we realise that targeting a young audience may not effect their social class as much because they will generally still be living with their families or living on University campuses as they are mostly still in education. We also understand that the area is urban and are purposefully targeting a more urban younger audience. Camden is a diverse multicultural area with variety, this is why we have chosen not to focus entirely on a specific ethnicity. Our TA can easily identify that the location is in the London area, if watching from abroad, and Camden's local community will also familiarise with it, which will help draw interest from our TA.
Although both of our actors are pale skinned we do not intend this to affect our target audience and realise that some ethnic backgrounds will favour our film more than others, like European ethnicity's. In addition, we aren't  heavily focusing on social class but understand that our type of film will attract a B-D grade audience; considering the ranges of family income's and social classes.

We wanted to follow a masculine stereotype of our protagonist - drinking a beer - to appeal to our young male audience. We want the under 18's to look up or aspire to him as he is older, suggested through the alcohol, being inclined to follow him as a main character. We want the over 18's to see him as their equal, someone who they can relate to and understand, via the suggestion of age through the alcohol, making him 'one of the lads'. 
He is also suggested to live at home or have some form of student accommodation. This would show the audience that he is independent and would help them aspire to be like him. We wanted our TA to relate to him as a peer considering that a large amount of our TA will be in education.
We didn't want to give away our protagonist as it is the beginning of the film and following a convention we want the audience to wonder who the characters are, their connection, their significance and generally act as part of a narrative hook for our TA.
Our male audience would be intrigued by the female ghost, firstly acting on a possible attraction to her as she is female and secondly, as she is a mysterious character - they will  want to know her intentions and connection with the protagonist.
Our female audience would relate to the female ghost initially via common grounds of her age and sharing the same gender. They may also relate to her via her costuming, white t-shirt and denim jeans, and will be interested in her character as she has blood stains and is of the supernatural. We wanted her to have blonde hair because it goes against the stereo type of having an unintelligent female. Having supernatural power - being a ghost - would make her seem more authorative and intellectual. This would help our audience realise not to underestimate or undermine her as a character because she is of the supernatural and, via her actions, is unexpected; giving her character a sense of mystery.

We aren't heavily focusing on out TA music interest because there is so much variety and we realise that our TA will listen to various genre's and styles of music. Having our protagonist listen to music on a radio station re-iterates his youth, as younger people are highly interested in music and it's variety. With an instrumental playing, interrupted by the news update, we didn't want to highly focus on a type of music genre - fitting to our TA, and we understand that Radio's do interrupt the music or begin updates after a song has finished playing - I have researched this in a previous post.