Who's The Target Audience for A Noir Film?

 Who's The Target Audience for A Noir Film?:

   

Average Ages of Noir Film Viewers

    The typical audience of a noir film usually encompasses adult and elderly men. The historical significance of film noir, and its black-and-white stylization often attracts the older gentlemen in the population as the classics are likely films they saw as a child. However, once we get into more specific sub-genres like neo-noir our target demographic widens to include younger men. In terms of the genres wider appeal, aspects of the character roles we see in noir films also appeal to audiences that enjoy romance, mystery, and crime movies as well. There's a considerable overlap between the crime and noir genre's audience demographic due to the similarity in their tone choice and subject matter. I believe that the audience of more traditional noir films being more geared towards the elderly is an obvious setback when we begin to look at how we can future-proof the noir genre. This older, more established audience also implies the need to adhere to tradition. That audience is notoriously reluctant to changes in the narrative structure of their films and pleasing them would be a test of how stringently you're able to adhere to the typical genre conventions of a noir film. However, there exists a great deal of opportunity when it comes to the audiences that enjoy more contemporary neo-noir films. These younger audiences allow filmmakers to be more experimental in how they build their narratives, using the conventions as a guide rather than a strict formula. The younger audience is typically more full of the more artistic and visionary viewers, which means they'll be more receptive to subversions of the genre's conventions and expansions upon its fundamentals. Noir films likely appeal to the more introspective and generally more pessimistic audience as well, mostly due to the subject matter. Viewers may come to the noir genre seeking the token flaws of noir characters as a matter of relatability. Viewers may also enjoy the more realistic, gritty exploration of the film's world through the subject matters of crime, murder, and generally the more macabre. The noir genre is niche on paper, but in terms of the stories it creates and the subject matters it confronts, the genre's influence can easily be widened. However, because of its initial niche appearance, it's often been looked at as a novelty, with only more experimental takes on it through the neo-noir genre finding significant success in the modern day. The genre can appeal not just to males either, women can find the typical femme fatale role of film noir actresses enthralling as well.  These characters can feel incredibly relatable and liberating, given that the role heavily subverted society's view of women at the time noir films began being produced.

Bladerunner 2049 (2017)

    In terms of marketing a film noir movie, many a method has been tried to varying degrees of success. The majority of modern noir films find their success in marketing through the use of film festivals, for example neo-noir films overseas like Only The River Flows (2023), and Summer of Changsha (2019). In order to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, it's likely that I'll have to market my film in a way that adheres to tradition but also offers something new for contemporary viewers. The most common marketing technique of modern noir films seems to be through the release of posters. For example, Bladerunner 2049 (2017) released theatric posters that generated a solid amount of traction due to the major acting roles and overall aesthetic quality of the film. This method isn't limited to newer films, classic films that I've discussed in my previous blog post like The Blue Dahlia (1946) released theatric posters that, when displayed at the front of theaters at the time, served as effective marketing tools comparable to billboards. The best way to reach my target audience would be to not only create elaborate and eye-pleasing posters to tease the film's release, but a trailer as well. 8 Many trailers employ a cryptic and vague method of storytelling in order to generate "hype" surrounding the film as the audience becomes intrigued about the story and plot. Making the trailer reflect exactly what's going to be in the film is integral to this plan as we would need to deliver on any expectations that the audience build from it. Marketing methods like merchandising wouldn't necessarily be viable here as there's not an established brand or series to build off of. When considering how my audience is going to react to marketing efforts, we must first realize a few things. First of all, being in a considerable niche means that our audience needs to be built up. We have no existing audience to rely on to propagate proper advertising and marketing. This means that a lot of our strongest points in marketing is going to be based on the viewer's word-of-mouth. Ideally, our audience would grow and snowball gradually as this word is spread, and if the audience determines that my film is worth their attention, we may be able to establish a foothold then. It's important to note that with a budget of effectively zero, marketing techniques like the theatrical posters may not hit that top quality that's considered industry standard. Whilst this isn't a practical issue to overcome, we can still mitigate it by focusing on what the typical noir audience wants, and what we can accomplish. Overall, the effective marketing of such a small-scale neo-noir film would be extremely difficult, but through the use of careful planning and production of promotional material I'm confident I could at least establish a minimal foothold in our target audience. 

Batman (2022)