Ideology

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitute ones goals, actions, and expectations. There is no set dominant ideology for short films; however there are dominant ideologies that are withheld for feature films that follow the horror genre. When creating our film we will be attempting to appeal to our audience’s dominant ideology of horror films whilst also attempting to create our own ideology for short films, this will allow us to easily establish that our film is categorized as a horror as it will follow the general consensus of feature horror films.

As our target audience is primarily teens and young adults, the film we are creating will need to fit the expectations that our focus group want, one of the features that our focus group mentioned that they liked about horror films was being able to relate to the characters of the film, we feel we will be able to fit this ideology by using actors that are around the same age group as our focus group, helping to fulfil this expectation for our focus group.

Target Audience

Horror films have a wide target audience, primarily ranging from teenagers to young adults as the certificates for horror films are usually either 15, or 18.

The target audience would be males and females ranged from 15-25, the younger audience for horror films are often teens that are daring and curious, they may also watch these films due to the gore and graphic scenes. Horror films often also portray naive and unknowing teenagers as the protagonists who are targets for psychopaths and serial killers.