Documentary target audiences

When producing a documentary, it is important to focus on a specific audience. Usually the audiences who watch the documentaries relate to the chosen topic or have specific interests in the chosen topic or people being interviewed e.g. fans of certain celebrities will watch a documentary if they are being featured.

Different types of documentaries also have a varied target audience. Informative documentaries, for example, can have an age range varying from young children to the elderly, but documentaries that focus on social groups or age groups are more likely to have a specific target audience e.g. a documentary focusing on drinking habits in teens and young adults is more likely to gain interest from that age group as it targets them as an age group.

So for a documentary to be successful, it has to connect with the audience it is targeting or gain some form of interest. If it doesn't relate with the audience then it has failed to document the subject being discussed as without an audience, a documentary cannot be successful. Not only that but if a documentary cant define the audience being targeted, then it cannot be structured in terms of language, soundtrack and mood set by editing using camera and lighting. 

This is because different age groups have different interests as well as different forms of communication. So, if there is no audience in mind when documenting a topic, there is no way of being able to determine what soundtrack to use, whether it be modern and connect with a young audience or classical and connect with an older audience; as well as language used whether it be sophisticated and technical to connect with adults and the elderly or whether it be patronizing and easy to connect with young children. By abiding the conventions and stereotypes, it gives the producer an idea of how a documentary can be constructed to suit the audience but if there are no conventions to follow, then the documentary cannot be created.

When distributing a documentary, it is important to bare in mind which platform to use to get through to the target audience. For example, pre teens up to young adults (11-29) are more likely to find documentaries on internet sites such as YouTube in comparison to adults and the elderly (30+) who aren't as familiar with modern tech as young people, and so would be more likely to find and watch documentaries on the television such as The BBC, Channel 4 and The Discovery channel.

Whereas Channel 4 are known to showcase short independent documentary films, these are featured at a specific time of day and so cannot be guaranteed to reach out to a mass in that audience targeted. My documentary will be distributed onto YouTube which, as already explained, will reach out to a younger audience, and so therefore I have decided for my target audience to be teens and young adults.

Being a teen myself, I understand the concept of the different social groups as well as being aware of the vast interests and hobbies of my age group. I have decided against creating informative documentary which is seen as "educational" and would generally be considered boring for people of my age group. I will create a documentary that focuses on the audience I have targeted and I will find a interest that is considered popular within this age range and document the positive values of this interest according to young people.