The genre that my film production is going to be is a coming-of-age film. Coming-of-age is a sub-genre of the very broad Drama genre. The best way to define a 'coming-of-age' film is that it is an account of how a person (the protagonist) makes the transition from youth to adolescence. The typical age that the protagonist should either be or approaching is 16 or 18 years old.
When it comes to a target audience, the coming-of-age film genre has a wide range of viewers. Although technically aimed at a targeted teenage audience, young adults will be able to appreciate issues that are influenced by everyday life and so they will be able to enjoy the film because it explored these realistic issues in an original yet respectful manner. The coming-of-age films that attract an older audience tend to include explicit, controversial themes which will raise that film's particular rating as a result.
My film's pitch is 'A sixteen year old boy becomes the victim of an abusive, tumultuous relationship under the hands of his manipulative girlfriend'. In this pitch alone, there is a theme that is a code and convention of coming-of-age films: relationships. Through this alternative approach towards the awareness of domestic violence, I am aiming to attract an audience of about 14-17 years old because they are mature enough to understand the concepts of a basic, loving relationship and will take away this approach as a form of encouragement if their concepts of a relationship are neglected or harmed. I think that if the age was any younger, they would become disinterested and the lack of 'visual effects' such as exploding cars or superheroes darting across the skies will not appeal to them. Although the target gender for this film is boys (as the film encourages them to speak out and have more confidence when it comes to gender equality in domestic violence), I think that girls will most likely be the gender that will actually watch this film because girls tend to enjoy coming-of-age dramas more.
