Documentary: Target Audience

 A Level Media Studies

Here explains and describes the target audience for our mockumentary, Dave(s). This blog post is written by me (Sharon).

The target audience for this mockumentary, 'Dave(s),' is catered towards people aged 15-25 (teenagers to young adults), mainly high-schoolers, Gen-Zs, and Asians as our concept conforms to typical stereotypes of high-school students played by Asians. As for the psychographics, many of those people can relate to these 6 Daves in terms of the diversity of personalities and traits, attitudes, morals, lifestyles, and perceptions. Such that some are egotistical, some play basketball, some are nerds, some are terrifyingly quiet, and some are timid. For instance, those who go to the gym may see themselves as 'Muscle Dave' since he is written as being a "gym rat"/"gym bro," who flexes their muscles everywhere and anywhere with no shame and is self-absorbed in a way. The opening to this mockumentary will feature individual interviews with each of the Daves to give the audience a general introduction to their contradicting personalities. Moreover, the target audience can relate to their strengths and weaknesses.

Gen-Zs being our primary targeted audience, technology, specifically social media, such as Instagram, TikTok, and/or Twitter has become a daily factor/routine in their lives. This eases the spread of the most recent news, for instance, our idea for this mockumentary lies on the viral meme of the "Josh Fight" on Twitter, where teenagers to young adults would definitely be up to date towards meme culture. Therefore, showcasing this media text to streaming services like YouTube, or Netflix would be highly beneficial in targeting Gen-Z, as they are likely to also share this content to social media platforms (e.g. commentating, sharing this media text to their friends, etc.).

Self Reflection: This is the first time I have targeted a target audience so specifically, such as Gen-Z as well as those that can relate to these characters' strengths, weaknesses, and personality traits, especially with a great number of stereotypes and representations of each of the Daves. This helped with our final text because it would assist us with the casting, location choices, and language/content (what teenagers say on a daily basis to their friends). As for the casting, we can therefore cast those of similar ages and are high schoolers as they can also help in improvising the lines (from an external point of view that we as a team may not have thought about). This helps my team with efficient use of time as we can simply cast our friends (not from external sources), allowing us to schedule filming more flexibly and easily. The locations, too, ease filming and targeting high schoolers as it takes place within the high school that illustrates a typical high school environment.