Bowling for Columbine target audience

Tyree

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE TARGET AUDIENCE

Improved

The audience for Michael Moore’s documentary film, ‘Bowling for Columbine’ would have to be very specific, because it isn’t the kind of film that everybody would be invested in. In a world filled with a lot of Hollywood action films, we will have to try to distinguish who the audience are and what sort of person they are. The film investigates the causes for the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre and gun laws in America.

AGE

We start with something that is fairly simple; age and gender. Through research that I have gathered from various questionnaires that I sent out, the age range seems to be from 18 and over. This is absolutely perfect because, in some way, the film is trying to reach out to teenagers, and children with violent tendencies. The actual Columbine Massacre itself was created from two teenagers who were obviously very angry at society, and the film actually tries to uncover why they could have got so hostile at such an early age, and how did they gain access to weaponry and explosives? Age demographic is most important when you take into consideration what kind of documentary you are making, for example; younger people may be interested in a film called 'Zombie Girl' which centres around a 12 year old girl trying to make her own zombie horror film, all the way through to the release, or you have the more mature audience who would rather watch a film that Michael Moore brings out which relies solely on educational political views that is mixed with American satire. Age could also bring you to this question; what is the audiences power level? Are you aiming at high schoolers? Michael Moore, for this film clearly intended to make the film for younger viewers and of course older viewers, mainly due to the fact that the Columbine High School Massacre was done by students, but it is a very adult issue.

GENDER

Although through my research both male and female people said that they would have been interested in this film. I think the film is mainly speaking to the male gender. Why? Because throughout the entire film when Michael Moore is interviewing people, a lot of the gun- toting is being done by men, who think that it’s their right and responsibility to own a gun and to protect themselves and family and friends, not the authorities. There was one scene where a man being interviewed reveals that he has firearms everywhere, including one that is fully loaded, underneath his pillow. He proceeds to take it from the pillow and point it to his head. These are the sort of people that the film investigates and asks who really should get to own a gun. Clearly, the two young men who shot up the school were not the appropriate kind of people to own guns, and neither were most of the men seen in the film, especially Charlton Heston, who routinely went over to various sites with the NRA where children were killed and celebrated firearms with pro- gun rallies, it’s actually quite sickening when you think about it. This speaks to the male demographic in so many obvious ways because they are the ones mostly seen and/or using guns, perhaps it dips into the whole idea of the Alpha Male, and why men should be trusted with weapons. But, I personally think that only select males should get hold of a gun. 

GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION

Michael Moore carries out his investigation through many locations in America; mainly Flint, Michigan, Moore’s own hometown. Moore is exclusively singling out Americans with this gun violence problem, particularly Charlton Heston who I have mentioned before. Through one of many montages seen throughout the film, we are shown statistics of how much gun crime there is per year in various Countries, these are Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and the United States. The statistics were that Japan had the lowest with only 40 per year, the United Kingdom has 68 per year, and the United States had 11, 127 gun crimes per year. So, it’s fairly obvious what geographically appropriate audience this was made for; Americans, although gun crime is a World wide issue.

EDUCATION
I don't think that it is absolutely necessary to have a specific IQ or education to view a documentary like this, you just have to be interested in the subject matter and the presenter. But, if I had to narrow it down, I would say that you would have to be quite educated to understand what is going on and what problems guns can cause. People with a higher IQ are most likely to watch something informative like this, whilst others with a lower or average IQ are more likely to watch a Hollywood action film or a comedy or something that is a lot more mainstream.

OCCUPATION
This one is actually quite tricky, you see, adults who have jobs and recieve wages are more likely to watch these kinds of movies, since they're more adult with adult themes, but the problem is that they wouldn't really have enough time to watch this film, or have any leisure time because they would, as adults, have such a heavy and hectic schedule in their lives. Then you have students or teenagers, who have more time on their hands with part- time jobs and School/College, so they would have more freedom to go to the cinema/download a film, but, another problem is that I don't believe that any student would be interested in a US based documentary like this anyway. But, there are a few teens out there who are interested.

INTERESTS AND LIFESTYLE
The audience's interests and lifestyle would have to be somewhat mature to fully understand the film and what Michael Moore wants to achieve and why. The target audience would also need to have a moral interest in current affairs and investigative documentaries. According to the website Raindance.org, a very good way to find out about your audiences lifestyle is to write several different diaries of a typical day in the life of potential audience members, you could then search Google images to find out and remind you who your target audience is. Another good exercise that links to interests and lifestyle is finding out what your audience likes to do on a night out? What do they enjoy? You could take the different answers and incorporate them into for film, although it would be more difficult to do this when working on a documentary film. Having said all this, this isn't the kind of documentary to "enjoy", as it does revolve around some very serious concerns that not many members of the audience would find the film 'entertaining', but more informative.

The target audience for this kind of film is the sort of person who goes by a very specific lifestyle choice, we will name him Bryan. They get up reasonably early in the morning, be it a work day or not, and have a specific morning schedule, doing everything in a specific order. Once out of the door they take a bus/train to work and take their car if it is a weekend or a day off. They're very tech savvy in their age (late 40's- early 50's) and like to spend time with those who also appreciate modern technology. They say that they have political views and try to act maturer that they already are, and always have an opinion on everything. But, they also watch the documentary out of interest and as a regular viewing.

Having said all of this, I still think that the main target audience would have to be Americans with a specific political view.