1(b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of
audience.
The concept of audience is fundamental to the making of a media text. A producer
must take into account the age, social status and gender and interests of a target
consumer in order to adjust the text to make it as appealing to them as possible. For
my A2 coursework I created a horror called ‘The sleepover’. Classification of age
appropriateness is important in audience identification. Films are screened by an
external board and given a minimum age of viewers. Most horror films are rated 18,
due to extreme gore, violence, sex and disturbance – not to mention emotional trauma
which is why I chose to rate my film as 18 as my film was a very conventional slasher
film.
The Hypodermic Needle effect is the first audience theory. It originated in the 1920s
when mass media first began to be popular. This suggests that a producer has an
intended meaning which is definitely understood by the audience. In this theory the
audience are completely passive. If this was applied to my text the audience would
view the killing scenes and sex scenes and instantly replicate the actions. This of
course is unrealistic and this theory is often argued to be very simplistic and outdate,
considering how much the media has developed this century.
The uses and gratifications audience theory suggests than an audience consume
particular texts in order to receive something from them. Bulmer and Katz identified
four uses and gratifications as diversion (entertainment and escape from reality),
surveillance (information), personal identity (seeing yourself reflected in the text and
learning new values and personal relationships (seeking emotional interaction and
substituting media relationships for your own). In my coursework, a consumer may
use diversion - the horror trailer is escapist – a route away from reality and they
would be entertained by the mystery and fear of my film. Diversion would also
include catharsis that my trailer would enable, which is using the media as an outlet of
emotion – they would experience horror in the safety of cinema. They would also
experience the ‘personal identity’ stage in seeing themselves in, or, admiring, the
good characters – particularly the ‘final girl’ character and her charming boyfriend,
depending on gender of audience member. They would also have the personal
relationships because they could feel emotion of the fear and sadness of the victims
whilst substituting their emotional relationship with the friendships in my trailer or the
main characters’ romantic relationship with her boyfriend. My audience would not
use the surveillance stage as horror films are not intended to be instructional.
The most modern and developed theory of audience is reception theory. This model
based on Stuart Hall’s encoding model, suggests that a producer will encode a text
and the audience will decode it. Their reading is affected by many contextual and
personal factors such as age, social status, gender, current mood and personal
experiences. I encoded my horror trailer as well as I could using beautiful, edgy,
feminine characters which appeal to the female consumers. I used isolated settings
which suggest to the audience that escape isn’t possible (deserted house, woods) thus
highlighting the experience of fear and panic that one hopes for when watching a
horror film. I used acoustic codes in the form of a deep male voice over and jumpy,
low orchestral score to hope that my audience will feel tension and suspense. My
killer was masked and always appeared silent and in the shadows, connoting evil and
dehumanising him hopefully creating a response of fear from the audience.
My main target audience were males and females aged 18-30. I used attractive actors
to appeal to the audience who would admire / desire them. The ‘cool’ stylish clothing
adds to this. I used the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, showing a victim’s
cleavage and the ‘final girl’ theory (hopefully creating a stronger feminist image to
other women) to attract both genders. I used audience research in the form of
questionnaires to find out my audiences preferences and dislikes in order to make my
trailer meet their interests as fully as possible. I also asked for audience feedback on
my first drafts which allowed me to make improvements based on the opinions of 20
18-30 year olds. The told me to exaggerate gore and violence more and use more
threatening music which I then incorporated using iMovie so that me audience was
tempted to watch my piece.
I aimed my piece at a low social status as my trailer was a version of British teenagers
experiencing the American slasher experience. I used strong language, popular music
for soundtrack and fashionable clothing to hopefully attract this group.
This is a level 3 / level 4 borderline response
Level 4 qualities –coherence, range of useful examples, ability to answer the
question in sustained manner, relating of theory to practice. The understanding
of Hall’s encoding / decoding model in relation to own work. The discussion of
‘effects’ early on is clear and relevant.
Level 3 qualities – the application of audience theories (insufficiently developed
for level 4 – eg the ‘use of’ Mulvey, in the same paragraph as the use of
questionnaires for feedback).
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