The Production

Target Audience was originally conceived in December 1998. The idea for the script was inspired by a variety of news stories of anti-gay groups accusing gay people of recruiting. “Besides the fact that it’s totally absurd, the question is how would anybody go about recruiting to be gay?” says Kittredge. “There are a lot of pros to being gay, but what exactly would be the sales pitch to a real straight person? That’s where the idea came from—the absurdity of bigotry.”

First on board the production were two fellow NYU alums, director of photography Alan Jacobsen and editor Savvas Paritsis. Next, producer Krystal Kennedy organized a production team and she and Dave designed a schedule which had a unique structure. “The challenge was that the movie is set around a character who watches, reacts to, and is affected by an infomercial on television,” says Kennedy. “So first we had to produce the television show-- shoot it, edit it, and then after that was all done, we had to shoot the actual movie. It was really like making two smaller short films.”

The shoot for the infomercial took place on the Globus Soundstage in New York City on February 9, 2002. DP Jacobsen used a Canon XL-1 Mini DV camera to acquire the images. A week later, scenes in other locations were shot, including Meow Mix, a lesbian bar in the East Village, and the director’s own apartment. Over the next 3 weeks, the infomercial was edited, onlined and dubbed for the film shoot.

“One of the things we looked into was doing it on HD,” says Kittredge. “I love technology. I had read a lot about the new 24p cameras and really wanted to try it out on this project. After reading all the facts and seeing all the transfers, in addition to doing a simple cost analysis, we actually found that shooting on 35mm film to be cheaper and of better quality. It was one of those great decisions where both sides of the production—the producer and the DP—agreed wholeheartedly.”

The film shoot took place in Queens, NY, the weekend of March 2 and 3, 2002. The two lead actors were shot all on the first day; the second day was used for the opening tracking shots, insert shots, and static shots of the infomercial on the television. Kittredge and Paritsis oversaw the editing of the film with a Final Cut Pro 3 setup over the next two months.

Target Audience was completed in June, 2002 and premiered at Outfest: The 20th Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Film Festival that July. It has since been featured at over fifty festivals, winning the HBO Audience Award at Reel Affirmations: The Washington Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and screens frequently on Showtime in America.