Target Audience

BBFC Rating

We have decided to give our film the rating of PG. We wanted to keep the rating quite low so not to limit our target audience. Films of a similar genre such as Pride and Prejudice have also been given the PG rating. After looking at the BBFC website and seeing the description of the ratings and what recent films have been rated at we came to this conclusion as our film will have similar themes. For example St Trinians: The Legend of Frittons Gold is rated also as a PG due to mild sex reference. This would be the case in our film as we have the theme of romance. Another example is My Father My Lord which is again rated as a PG due to scenes of mild distress. This is another aspect that would affect the rating of our film as the distress the main protagonist portrays may be too distressing for young children.


Although in our trailer all the characters who appear are Caucasian I don't believe this will affect our overall appeal of the film and limit our audience. Other films set in the same time period such as The Duchess don't seem to feature non-Caucasian characters and The Duchess made £1,402,200 at the box office in the first weekend so I don't believe this factor affected the films appeal. The reason why non-Caucasians appear in films set in this era is that multi-ethical societies were nonexistent.

Our film will mostly appeal to females due to the themes of romance and drama but also the stereotypical view that Period Drama's are the female domain. We understand that we haven't necessarily incorporated a stereotypical male theme such as action-adventure but we don't think this will dramatically limit our audience. A film that supports this view is Pride and Prejudice which made £2,529,947 in the opening weekend. Pride and Prejudice has similar themes to our film also one factor that appeared in Pride and Prejudice that we've tried to incorporate into our film is the dominant female main protagonist. This is where we're hoping that the male gaze theory will be applied and that this will be a pull factor for the male audience.

At first glance our film trailer would appear to be aimed at the upper class. This is due to the period drama theme which is frequently stereotyped as appealing mostly to the upper class. Our characters in the film are of upper class themselves and throughout the film the characters remain to be portrayed as upper class through costume and mise-en-scene such as the elegant ball gowns and the grand house. By doing this we avoid stereotyping the lower class. One of the main themes in the film is romance which is such a broad genre that we hope this will attract all audiences, whatever their class.

We have decided to not use a voice over in our trailer, we have also chosen not to use diegetic voices from scenes in the trailer. This is due to the fact that we want the trailer to be based on action rather than words and it avoids the problem of regional accents. If we'd decided to use voices we would have to deliberate over what accent would be suitable. If we chose a Yorkshire accent for example it may have limited our audience. Another factor is that without a voice over the trailer can be shown in countries such as America and not have to be adapted for American viewers.

Our film will almost most definitely appeal to fans of period dramas such as Pride and Prejudice, The Duchess and Vanity Fair. Although another audience that our film may tap into is fans of romantic dramas such as The Notebook.

Our film will probably appeal mostly to the heterosexual female. However it may attratct the 'pink pound' due to the theme of love and romance.

Our stereotypical individual that would be attracted to our film would probably be a female of middle class. As our film is a period drama they'd probably be interested in literature and history. This ties in with the film Pride and Prejudice and we hope that fans of this type of film will be attracted to our film.