Profile

Passion pictures is the ‘client’ for this brief. They are a UK-based animation and film production company established in 1987, and have branches in London, Paris, New York, Toronto and Melbourne. They mainly produce advertisements for companies for TV and online, as well as animated short films which are created by a variety of directors with strong visual styles.

The company has produced promotional content for LEGO, McDonalds, Sony, League of Legends and many other big corporations as well as famous names like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.

Their work in animation and TV also includes Disney’s ‘101 Dalmation Street’ animated series and the Netflix anthology ‘Love Death and Robots’.

Subsidiaries and Target Audience

I think the target audience for Passion Pictures as a whole, can be split into a few groups based on the subsidiaries that produce films using the Passion Pictures name. These subsidiaries (including Passion Pictures) are:

• Passion Pictures studios and Passion Paris (their studio in paris) – Who produce commercials, short films and TV animation.
• Strange Beast – Who mainly produce animated commercials, Idents for TV and PSA videos.
• Keo Films – Who produce documentary films and series for traditional TV/on demand services.

Passion Pictures

I think that the target audience for Passion Pictures and Passion Paris is very broad, but most of their commercials are mainly aimed at families. They tend to produce commercials for brands that are fully animated, centering on themes of family and childlike fun – with vibrant colours and cartoonish animated movement. Passion Pictures also produce animated commercials for video games, which are more catered to teenagers and young adults – usually men.

Passion Pictures’ TV content includes two main target audiences – children (the 101 Dalmatians Disney show, and ‘LEGO City Adventures’) and adults (they worked on the ‘Sex Education’ and ‘Love Death and Robots’ series for Netflix). Their animated short films also share this older audience, containing some adult-oriented themes like alcohol, violence and profanity in the cases of their films ‘The Dead Pirates UGO’ and ‘Pear Cider and Cigarettes’.

The location of Passion Pictures’ audience would likely be in the UK, as they are based here and work with many UK brands. They would also likely have audiences in France, since the sister-studio is in paris, as well as some of the locations mentioned previously which have branches of Passion Pictures.

Strange Beast

Strange Beast, the studio fully dedicated to animation, produces short films with bright colours and a distinctive visual style. Their work includes commercials for brands like Pop Tarts and Cheerios, short films for Adult Swim and Vice as well as many commissioned PSAs covering topics like smoking, body positivity and climate change. Strange beast has a team of artists which produce the films in their own style. I think that their target audience is teenagers and young adults (around 15-24) also heavily including an audience of women; a lot of the PSAs they have produced are about things like periods and breast cancer. I also think that the target audience for Strange Beast is based in the US as well as the UK, since they have produced shorts for the California Tobacco Control Programme and Pop Tarts.

Keo Films

Keo Films makes documentaries with a focus on nature as well as working with UK-based TV personalities like Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall and Yotam Ottolenghi. A lot of Keo Films’ work is posted online or aired on TV for services like the BBC and Channel 4. I think that because Keo Films are more involved with producing films for traditional TV companies, their target audience is older – a middle-aged audience around 40-55 who might watch more TV channels than a younger audience who might not own a TV or a set top box and are watching streaming services like Netflix instead. I also think that Keo Films’ target audience is firmly UK based, as they work with a lot of UK talent producing films for UK broadcasting companies.

Conclusion

Passion Pictures create a wide variety of short films, documentaries and commercials – which are received by audiences at a range of ages and locations around the world. They work with many clients, directors and animators. It has been important to consider this research when thinking about my film, its target audience and how my film would fit into the Passion Pictures library of work.