Target audience - Romantic films

Most Romantic films are targeted at females and are usually rated 12 or 15 meaning that the target audience age generally ranges from 12 -24. As part of our research into the target audience of romantic films we gave our questionnaires to people who we considered to be part of the target audience (young females) and also some who are not in the target audience to see why those in the target audience enjoy romantic films and why those who are not do not enjoy these films.

From this we found, as expected, that it was mainly the girls that enjoyed romantic film and the boys that did not. However there were some anomalies in that some of the girls said that the did not enjoy romantic film and some of the boys said that they did. This helps to show us that our genre is not restricted to the female audience and so we should not only target it at females, however the majority of males said they did not like the romantic genre therefore we will primarily target the film at girls.

Most of the negative feedback was due to the genre being seen as repetitive in that the same thing happens in every romantic film. Therefore to improve ours and draw in not only our own target audience but also a wider spread of people we have decided to make ours slightly different in that it is not just a romantic film, it is a hybrid between romantic and teen/coming of age films (e.g. mean girls, clueless etc.) we hope this makes the film more relatable to our target audience.

Negative comments about the genre were also that it is perceived as 'boring' and so to make ours more exciting for our younger audience we have decided to use party scenes to help portray the coming of age side to the genre, this also helps to relate to our ever changing audience, in that teens go to parties from a far younger age these days therefore to appeal to them, it is important to get this more wild aspect to their lives involved in our film because teens are nowadays more likely to relate to and watch hybrid films like American Pie (comedy/ slightly romantic) than films which are only in the romantic genre like The lake house or The Note book, because for the vast majority these are seen as 'boring'.

However all the feedback showed that the audience think the key aspect to a good romantic film is the relationship and romance between the two main characters, therefore we have decided not to make the film too much like a coming of age film and still stick to mainly portraying the romantic side to our film.

We have also decided that to make our film more visually interesting and to capture the attention of our audience by using a variety of different shots and editing techniques (e.g. a visual match, wipe ect.) this will also help to make the film more entertaining to watch.

Romantic films are generally watched by groups of teenage girls or couples. The genre is popular with couples because it creates a nice atmosphere for the couple to enjoy each others company and to relate to what the see on screen.