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Post by toothless11 on Dec 5, 2011 1:19:21 GMT -5
Lol yeah XD. Strange...MLP is intended to be a show mostly for girls, yet more bos seem to be watching it XD. Similar with HTTYD. It's meant to be for kids and/or teens and adults are watching it more in some places XD.
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Post by IcelandicEel on Dec 5, 2011 1:24:50 GMT -5
Especially in Greece, where only 6% of the people who watch it are teenagers and 42% are 35-44. But the more HTTYD fans the better, no matter the age group! Same with MLP, toothless11... ;D
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Post by Varðr on Dec 5, 2011 3:52:06 GMT -5
Lol yeah XD. Strange...MLP is intended to be a show mostly for girls, yet more bos seem to be watching it XD. Similar with HTTYD. It's meant to be for kids and/or teens and adults are watching it more in some places XD. Cuz its fun to watch something different in once in a while!! You know I usually watch Horror, Scifi and Action movies.... where the blood flies all over the place!!
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Post by realpeanut2004 on Dec 5, 2011 5:29:47 GMT -5
Average age = 18 years old. Lol, I'm right on the target~ Ah, the power of programming! I downloaded them at around 1 profile/second. So it only took my about 5 minutes. And I didn't exclude you to be mean, I just have a feeling you're going to skew my data. You know, with your 5,000+ post count. ;D I wrote my own program. It was in Ruby, actually. And then the one that download webpages was in AppleScript (a programming language for the Mac). Looks like I'd be better to learn even more on programming... The only language I'm mostly familiar with is Java...
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Post by Varðr on Dec 5, 2011 9:32:06 GMT -5
So, can You give us the complete breakdown of this matter?
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Post by Admin on Dec 5, 2011 12:27:54 GMT -5
Personally, the fact that HTTYD and even MLP have such a wide fanbase from male to female and young to old makes them exceptionally unique. They have the ability to go BEYOND the demographic, like Harry Potter did in the past, simply because they are so enjoyable and not solely catered to it's target demographic.
When something can do that, I have a lot of respect for it. Many shows and movies and books and even games have a problem with sticking to their target demographic a bit TOO closely (for example, many young adult novels are written for teenage girls... and ONLY teenage girls, making it impossible for people older or male to enjoy them at all. And Twilight.), which keeps many people from enjoying it. I have seen FAR too many children's movies that cater only to kids (usually direct to video or made for TV movies) and specifically to a certain gender.
But since movies like HTTYD surpass that and have a wider fanbase, one has to wonder. Is it a good thing to make something specifically for a certain audience? Doesn't that simply alienate everyone else? For another example, take Don Bluth's film An American Tail. It's the story of a little boy (most likely no older than 5 or 7) who's Jewish family choses to escape Soviet Russia and the Cossaks in the early days before World War 2. However, on the trip the little boy is thrown off their ship, only making it to shore by nothing short of a miracle, and he has to hunt for his lost family alone.
Oh, and this little boy is an animated talking mouse, who joins in a few musical numbers.
It is clearly a children's movie, and made for them. However, many people who watch without having seen it as a child find that hard to believe because it is a film that handles itself maturely and keeps itself serious, while having a great deal of fun thrown in as well. It takes real and mature issues like racism, immigration, and the fear of losing a loved one, and channels it in a way that children will be able to understand it easier without being scared, and keeps the enjoyment for adults.
This is what I think needs to happen with more movies meant for children, and this is what I think HTTYD did absolutely and unequivocally RIGHT. It has many issues that children and teenagers deal with, and even many adults, such as family relations, not fitting in, peer pressure, trying to be someone you are not, and taking the chance to do something no one else thought was possible. But at the same time, it is set in a fantastical world of vikings and dragons where every moment could be their last. It transcends genre and age by giving these maturity, and keeps it interesting and fantastic by adding a child like flair.
You many have to grow, but you never have to let go of being young, that stays with you forever. When something handles things you remember in a way that you can still relate to... you latch onto it.
I am 21 years old. I am a woman. I am not the target demographic for How To Train Your Dragon in the least. But I still love it. Because so much of it reminds me of things I went through in high school and even with my own family. You don't have to be the target to love it. At least I don't think.
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Post by Ӊ ӑ z ҿ on Dec 5, 2011 13:54:31 GMT -5
^ Could not have put it better myself. There are facets even to many shows directed towards younger audiences that appeal to more mature demographic categories, such as adults. Another example would be some of the shows on Cartoon Network, even - a channel dedicated primarily to kids. Shows such as Samurai Jack or Star Wars: The Clone Wars contain some mature content, without overstepping the PG-13 boundary, that appeals to older audiences. It was excellent planning on the layout of HTTYD on the part of the director and his staff.
Hm. Speaking of demographics, when I originally registered on this site in April 2010, roughly a year and a half ago, the male to female ratio was at least 1 : 2, with females being dominant. Now it seems to have changed. Either the male aspect of the fanbase is growing, or the new males chased away all the females. XD
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Post by toothless11 on Dec 5, 2011 17:00:41 GMT -5
Or everyone left and the forum got "reset"? XD
@bane
I TOTALLY agree with you on all that :.
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Post by Unitedmoviemaker on Dec 5, 2011 18:17:17 GMT -5
As far as demographics go, I think HTTYD really hit the mark of being kid friendly, but not dumbed down to where adults won't watch it. For some reason I think this happens a lot, where a children's movie is being made and someone (usually high on the film production food chain) becomes lazy and dumbs it down for the kids. Sometimes it's to meet the demographics or maybe something else. As said before, It's a wise idea to have a story that can address adult issues without being inappropriate for little kids. I hope the people high on the Dreamworks production food chain don't try to mess with HTTYD. Because if they do, it might shut out a portion of the demographic. (sorry if this is too long-winded, I had a random burst of things to write down )
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Post by IcelandicEel on Dec 5, 2011 22:05:09 GMT -5
I completely agree. No one should like a movie/anything because it fits their demographic. They should like it because they like it. Demographics are just society and marketing. We don't have to follow them, and probably shouldn't. I know if I did I wouldn't have discovered HTTYD in the first place! But anyway, it's still interesting to see who DOES like HTTYD in the end: First, the dreaded pie chart: Good for them for giving us an "Undisclosed." It's much more skewed towards females than YouTube (45 M/55 F), which is interesting. Especially when you interpret the chart by area. Or is it by arc length? Area? Arc length? Oh no! Moving on. Ages. The mean age of a HTTYD fan is 19.8, which is quite a bit higher than I thought it would be. But the standard deviation is 7.6, so there is a fair range around that number. Fun fact: there's someone on this forum who is 111. Fun fact: they may not be telling the truth. This is a chart for age: (sorry for the wildly changing axes) Here is an age chart for females, done in baby blue just to be annoying: And a similarly annoying one for males: So it looks like male fans are, in general, just a little bit younger than female fans. Additionally, it seems that when compared to YouTube, all ages are shifted more into the teens and 20s. This was kind of what I was predicting, though I got the overall gender distribution completely wrong. What am I saying here? What I'm saying is HTTYD needs more male fans! My guess, though I may be wrong, is that males are affected more by the target demographic effect than females. Males feel the need to be "manly" and, no matter how hard Toothless tries, he still can't make up for Hiccup's lack of "manliness." Hiccup may be a Viking at heart, but he certaintly doesn't look or act like one. Whereas females do not have this problem (obviously), and can enjoy the movie more for what it is. Lucky them. Here's the number of posts users make. There's that giant clump at 0 because 34.1% of people never post. And here's a logarithmic one, which is a little easier on the eyes, but a little harder on the brain. Which means I would be somewhere in the logarthmic 89th percentile (I don't know what I'm talking about). Should I have paid more attention in class during statistics? Probably. But I was too busy watching HTTYD. What can I say, not a waste of time. ;D
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Post by toothless11 on Dec 5, 2011 22:16:04 GMT -5
Wow VERY nice explanation . So confusing words though, but sound ok. And about that 111 year old person, she/he has a dragon OC who's an elder. So that age must be based off on it...XD. I'll re-read though the whole think again sometime XD.
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Post by IcelandicEel on Dec 5, 2011 22:26:25 GMT -5
Aha! That makes sense, then. Although I don't actually know their username. I found it when making the graphs.
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Post by toothless11 on Dec 5, 2011 22:27:53 GMT -5
Haha I can find her/him XD. By the time you reply, I'll have it! XD But yeah...
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Post by IcelandicEel on Dec 5, 2011 22:28:56 GMT -5
Parasitic Terror. Do I win?
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Post by toothless11 on Dec 5, 2011 22:29:38 GMT -5
*facepalm* You beat me to it! LOL XD
EDIT: JUST when i found her XD
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