How do mainstream films target and maximise their audiences' refer to STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON? (10)

-Using events that people can relate to

-Collaboration with Legendary Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Beats

-Economic factors

-Viral marketing             

Straight Outta Compton was based on real-life event, which was the LA riots, California, in the mid- 1980’s which was impacted by the social upheaval caused by the racial tension and agents of social change, including the famous group, N.W.A. Causing fans of biopic films to be engaged as they would feel like they are seeing something historical and factual, especially with one type of trailer which was black and white in the beginning, along with Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, members of the original N.W.A and they talk to the audience how culturally significant their band is, and how they grew up in Compton. Including N.W. Trap music within the trailer draws in a certain audience, fans of N.W.A. Which the film targets the audience that was or still currently fans of N.W.A. Their demographic could be fans in their 30s-40s due to the people that lived through the period. In addition, N.W.A fans could be engaged by the constant reference the N.W.A all over the marketing materials. Intertextuality, one of the posters of ‘Straight Outta Compton’ was designed to look like one of the old N.W.A album, which would be obvious to true fans. Another way the mainstream film tries to target their audience would be the cast in the film is mainly a black cast and using 1 famous white actor, Paul Giamatti. The fact that the vast majority of the cast are ‘young, male, black’ so as being part of America’s history, Americans would want to watch the movie, older people would want to watch the movie, however, to get the attention of a wider audience like younger generation and people of different ethnicity, particularly black.

Another way to how ‘Straight Outta Compton’ maximises their audience is that the movie was produced by Legendary Pictures and their Partnership with Universal Pictures, the film’s distributor. Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures are very famous, popular and is a large vertically integrated companies and part of global conglomerates. Allowing the film to have more funding, able to cast famous actors and actresses, resources and easier global distributor. The benefits of the partnership were they were able to work with the real members from N.W.A such as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the right to play popular ranges of songs within the movie, locations where they were allowed to film in and size and power of companies involving what they could afford such as large sets, lots of extra and extravagant locations. Universal did all the marketing techniques for, ‘Straight Outta Compton’ so they made several trailers including a ‘green band’ which is aimed at a more mainstream global audience allowing a wide range of audiences to watch the film. In August 2015, Beats by Dr. Dre launched an app that allowed users to upload their own photographs to SOSOMEWHERE.Com
Within 1 week there were around 6 million downloads and in a successful way of targeting young, modern and digital-native audiences.