Target Audience- (The Blair Witch Project)

I chose to analyse the audience of the Horror-Thriller film The Blair Witch Project as it is most alike our own Thriller Opening task. By analysing this film's audience and the films reviews, I can adapt my own piece to suit the qualities of a successful and authentic Thriller opening.  This is its synopsis:

Three film students go missing after traveling into the woods of Maryland to make a

documentary about the local Blair Witch legend leaving only their footage behind.

The Blair Witch Project was released in 1999, 20 years after The Exorcist was seen. The Exorcist was called “the best horror of all time” and its great success spurred on many other directors and producers to create their masterpiece in the genre. The Crucible released in 1996 was another iconic book and film using known for the theme of Witchcraft following up real life historical events in the town of Salem. At this time, Horror-Thrillers were very successful and a favourite at the cinema. 

 The International Movie Database’s (IMDB) review of The Blair Witch Project rated it a 6.4/10.0. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an average 7.3/10.0 and an 83/100 from MetaCritic.com which is very good as it was only a small budget, American production. 

The film won 11 awards and were nominated for a total of 17. 

Let's take a better look into the audience of the film. This is a user ratings chart for The Blair Witch Project which takes into account gender and age.  Here we can see that the film was most popular with males under 18 and females under 18. Why? Well, the three main characters are students all under the age of 18. This proves that to be successful with your target audience you must have relatable characters- this can be through age and gender. There were two male characters and one female character meaning that both genders in the audience had someone they could physically and emotionally relate to. The film was least successful with users of IMDB over the age of 45. The reason for this could be the fact that middle aged or elderly figures in the audience dislike the horror genre or couldn't really understand how the characters were emotionally feeling. The IMDB staff (19 of them) rated the film a 7.4/10. This is a much higher than the other scores but as with all demographic data, the lower amount of people asked, the more likely the final data will be influenced by extremitive scores. This could be why the smaller aged under 18 groups have higher scores than larger 18-45 age group. The data shows that 45,568 males aged 30-44 voted the film a 6.4 which makes the overall score for the film 6.4 too. This shows that your although the target audience is the priority, other audiences will be watching too and it is important that your film is appealing to multiple groups.

The following image is the best rated user-submitted review on the film on IMDB:

Using this review as a future producer of a Thriller Opening, set in a similar setting with similar characters, I can now take away the positives and negatives of this film. The main positive and negative aspect was the camerawork and accompanied editing. The camerawork was purposefully filmed in a disorienting and shaky manner without the use of equipment. The editing was for dramatic purposes and not for clarity making scenes seem faster with more tension and the creation of a darker atmosphere. For my opening, I don't want documentary style footage as such. I want to be able to convey the emotions and feelings of the characters at the same time as using the camera as tool to spy, stalk and follow the characters in and around the forest/wooded setting. Point Of View shots will be used and the setting and lighting as micro-elements to create a sinister atmosphere. I particularly like the line in the review that says "many key moments lasting just a little too long for comfort". This allows the camera to have an even bigger impact in creating the tone. The Blair Witch Project was praised for a realistic character roles and script. This is something I would like to nail when producing the opening as it will be how the audience relates to the characters and gets ensnared within the action.