Target Audience

This Blogpost (Written by Maxi) features the development of our documentary, including the target audience, the concepts we've discussed, and more.

CONCEPT: Dave

Our first concept of the documentary we're going to make is called "Dave". It is a mockumentary that features 6 individuals, all named Dave, who all go to the same school. The 6 Dave's all have drastically different personalities, problems, and strengths. Some are timid, some are very egotistic, some play basketball, some are nerds, etc. Once they find out that they all share the same name, they decide that they're going to have a competition, and whoever wins gets to keep the name. The opening of the documentary will focus on the introductions to the characters in the style of an interview, which we plan will intrigue audiences as they may be shocked at how different all the Dave's are, despite sharing the same name. We hope that our documentary will show people how everyone lives their own life, and that life doesn't revolve around a single person. Furthermore, we want to show different students can be from each other, even though they all go to the same school. We aim that through this opening introduction to our characters we will be able to give all our audience members a way to see themselves in our characters, and to resonate with their struggles, problems, strengths, and more, which will have them captivated to keep watching the documentary.

The target audience for this documentary will compromise high-schoolers, between the ages from 16-18, from a multitude of races but more specifically Asians. This is because the cast of the documentary will all be a part of this demographic of people. The psychographics of our audiences will vary quite heavily though as all the Dave's will have very different personalities. Many different audiences will be able to relate to these characters as they may see themselves in them. For example teenagers who are nerds and play video games will see themselves in one Dave, while jocks who love going to the gym will see themselves in another. This goes as well for their attitudes, and lifestyles, as some Dave's may be really outgoing, productive, and cool, while other Dave's will be introverted, shy, and unconcerned. 

Our documentary aims to be satire and be a form of diversion for audiences as the characters of the documentary are all intended to get a laugh out of audiences. However, one key purpose of the documentary is that we want to show audiences/tell them to never judge a book by its cover, and to embrace diversity, no matter how different you may be with someone, as everyone has their own place in society.

Since our target audience compromises such a young group of people (Gen Z), their media consumption habits most likely are heavily based on social media platforms, and streaming services. They will most likely want to watch our documentary on services like Netflix, or maybe YouTube, as it will allow them easy access to our documentary by providing it on a platform they are used to. Distributing it on social media will also allow them to share it, talk about it to their friends, and more.

As previously mentioned, our documentary is mainly catered towards teens/young adults. Thus if an audience member is a part of that age group, they'll be caught up with all the references to modern pop culture that may be included. But, if an audience member is outside of that age group, they will need to know about the habits of Gen Z kids, the different stereotypes that are associated with them, etc. 

We aim to make our documentary as accessible and inclusive as possible, as to allow as many people to watch and get a laugh out of it. So, we plan on including subtitle's as well as having a Dave with a disability as to further represent this group of audience members.

When watching the documentary, we hope audience members will realize how diverse we all are as people. How not one single group is better than another, and to realize that we are all perfect in different ways. We hope that audiences will be able to get a laugh out of the documentary, due to its unserious and playful nature, but we also hope to instill the message of diversity and hopefully allows them to gain a new perspective on life that will guide them to interact, talk to, and make friends with people/groups of people that they may usually never talk to, due to preconceptions in their heads about them that our documentary hopes to eradicate.

Self reflection:

I believe finding our specific target audience definitely helped us in making specific content decisions about the subcultures we wanted to include in our documentary, and the forms of humor that would be most appreciated by these audiences.