Audience Theory 2

Audience Theory

What effects do media texts have on audiences?

In many ways these can fall into two camps:

Passive and Active.

The Hypodermic Model

Here , the media is seen as powerful and able to inject ideas into an audience who are seen as weak and passive. The Nazis were experts at using this model using propaganda in advertising posters for example. It suggests that a media text can inject ideas , values , and attitudes into a passive audience.

The Cultivation Theory

The Cultivation Theory is another model that treats the audience as passive it suggests that repeated exposure to the same message such as an advertisement will have an effect on the audiences attitudes and values.

Two Step Flow Theory

This suggests that messages move in two distinct ways

1. Opinion leaders receive messages from the media

2. They pass it on to a more passive audience

3.The audience mediate this received

Reception Theory

This is an active theory. It suggests that social and daily experiences can affect the way an audience reads a media text and reacts to it. The theorist Stuart Hall suggests that an audience has a significant role in the process of reading a text and this can be discussed in three different ways.

The Dominant or Preferred reading

This claims that the audience shares the code of the text and fully accepts it preferred meaning meaning as intended by the producers.

Negotiated reading

This claims that the audience partly shares the code of the text and broadly accepts the the preferred meaning but can change the meaning in some way according to their own experiences.

Oppositional reading

This claims the audience understands the preferred meaning but does not share the texts code and rejects this intended meaning.

The beginning of our story board

Our Group went to look at a possible filming location in Cuffley, here we took photos and short films on our phones of possible shot ideas and locations also we practised composing the shots, below is the beginning of our storyboard with analysis.

Storyboard Music Video.ppt Recovered]

Practice filming and Location Searching

Here we are practicing filming the opening shot, it is the first shot in our rooftop location, it is a mid shot of the protagonist singing, in naturally dark lighting so the urbanisation of her surroundings. However we are going to have to film on a windy night as we all agreed we loved her hair blowing showing how out of control and turbulent she felt.

We liked this location as it has connotations of both urban (graffiti) and rural (lighting, trees, leaves e.t.c.) locations. We felt this symbolised her inbetween decisions or beginning to move on from her life. Therefore the symbolism of the next shot (her running out under the bridge) symbolises that she has made a decision and is running from her old life, into the new.

This is a wide practise shot of me in the performance side of the video possibly cutting from this wide shot to a close up so the audience could see the lip syncing.

Audience Theory

Audience is a key concept through out media studies, because all media texts are produced with an audience in mind that they aim to appeal to. In other words the audience are those who will receive the text and make some sort of sense out of it.

In media Terms the audience is any group of people who receive a media text, and not just people who are together in the same place. They receive the text via a media carrier such a newspaper or magazine , television , DVD , radio or the internet. It can also be a mobile phone, I pod or any other device that stores or receives media messages.

Television producers and Music Directors need an audience for their productions other wise their would be no reason for the input of work into something that would not be viewed or appreciated by the public. Once their creations have been viewed by audience with a successful outcome they can then finance their programmes or music videos that the audience likes supplying for the demand.

Below is the audience for the Rocky Horror Motion Picture Show. As you can see, there's a strong desire to "believe" in the fantasy of the movie.

A* Grade

In class we had a look at the Specification for us to become aware of how to gain the highest marks, we will incorporate all these features into our storyboard to the best of our ability so we can do so.

Magic Bullet Perspective

Hypodermic-syringe model or "Magic Bullet" perspective

This model is rooted in the 1930's and today is considered obsolete and has been replaced by newer and more up to date theories.
The hypodermic-syringe model implied that the mass media (newspapers, films, music e.t.c) has a direct, powerful and instant impact on audiences the model describes it as becoming 'injected' with information through a medium. For example a person who uses the medium of tv to watch violent films would eventually become desensitised and their opinions and views on the topic changed through the medium.

Meeting - Band Name

This is a picture of us having a discussion on what we would like the name of our group to be, after researching bands we found that many solo artists are simply known by stage names such as Lady Ga Ga , Pink and Will I Am.

Even though the type of song we chose to do a music video for has a lead singer singing the song we do not want to isolate them from the rest of the group so the band name we would like to have will generously acknowledge all the band members.

Examples of Bands with a lead singer yet perform under a band name include The Killers, The script and the Pussycat Dolls.

In our group however there is one singer and due to the problem with the harp we will not have a band performing which is something all the bands above have in their music video, therefore similar to our song choice we are considering using a name like

Florence and the Machine

Marina and the Diamonds

Selena Gomez and the Scene

meeting

Here we are producing our treatment, we have decided that we will have to simplify our ideas as some are unachievable with the resources we have. However we are still keen to pursue our imagination vs reality concept and are looking at ways of simplifying this. A possible idea was not so much imagination more twisted reality however this would not contrast as well as imagination and with the obvious contrast in the song we do want to reflect this in our video.

Imagination vs Reality

Imagination vs Reality

The concept we have developed for our video is imagination vs reality, we developed this from the lyrics and meaning of the song as although we do not want to follow the lyrics exactly we want some similarity to draw links and strengthen the video.

Above is Gwen Stefani's video for "What You Waiting For" this video includes many of the ideas we came up with including Alice and Wonderland with the main characters of the white rabbit and queen of hearts it also brings in symbolic features of the story for instance the maze and the tea party.

.However in this video Gwen Stefani doesn't oppose reality and imagination in the same way we hope to. We want to represent reality with dark clothes, urban/ industrial settings, smudged make up and the "dark side" of teen life. Opposing this with a brightly coloured imagination sequence would keep the audience hooked and encourage them to enjoy the song.

Reality Sequence

We hope to represent reality by filming in a rooftop looking over an urban landscape with the opening scene involving the main vocalist surrounded by the dark side of teen life possibly the only one concious. The picture below shows the kind of landscape we hope to achieve however we will film it later in the day and possibly

add post production effects to make the whole scene seem drearier. We can hopefully achieve our opening sequence as we live in an urban area and could hopefully get permission to film on top of one of these, however we would have to recruit some extras meaning we would have to get this sequence right quickly or our extras may not be willing to co-operate.

Meeting

Us mind mapping ideas for stone cold sober with our concept of Imagination vs Reality Our ideas for this include an 'Alice and Wonderland' theme we had the idea of using drab colours for the reality idea possibly with industrial connotations this will be contrasted with the imagination theme which will have bright colours and a more natural setting.

Practice Story Board

In class we decided to practice story boarding and to analysed a music video of an Artist from our Pop-soul music genre and we chose Paloma faith. As a group we watched her music video on repeat and observed the camera techniques , lighting , camera framing etc. in order for us to story board the scenes. We story boarded up to did 30 seconds into the music video after noticing that story boarding the whole video would be a long process.

As some of us in the group pointed out the filming techniques used in the video we paused the video screen in order for another member of the group to draw the still image.We used aStory board layout that was already prepared with boxes to fill in making the story boarding process easier. And it aslo made us think about the layout of our own story board for our music video. It was good practice and prepared us for story boarding our own music video.

Story Board - Page one

Story Board - Page two

Story Board - Page three

Story Board Example

STORY BOARD

I decided to scan in this example of a story board that my group will be using to plan out the scenes of our Music Video.

Our story board will be similar to this and will include the same features like this one has.

This story board is an example of a good professional one as it allows us to decide on the type of shot , framing , Angle and duration of the clip helping us to be alot more organised and prepared for filming.

As we are filming a music video we will need to get shots right first time if we are filming in difficult or complex locations, therefore we will analyse the video shot by shot in time with the lyrics of the song and decide when the narrative begins so we do not have to lip sync all of the song each time.

Band Name

Another Group meeting was organised for us to Gather ideas on band names.

We came up with the idea that the main girls name of the group should be 'honey'. Initially we liked 'honey and the libertines'. However there is already a band called 'The Libertines' therefore we dealt that if we were trying to establish ourselves as a new band we would not want to confuse our target audience between the two bands.

Therefore we looked up synonyms of Libertines as it means 'rebelious' which we liked as it was a juxtaposition between honey which symbolises sweetness and smoothness with rebellious which symbolises possible darkness and violence, the opposition also ties into the message of our video a contrast of good times (high key lighting, natural settings, sweet/ innocent dress), and the bad times (low key lighting, urban settings, dark clothing and connotations of destructive relationships).

Synonyms of libertines or rebellious:

1. Harlot
2. Little virtues
3. Loose morals
4. Anarchist
5. Radical
6. Resistant
7. Restless
8. Revolutionary
9. Turbulent
10. Ungovernable
11. Unruly
12. Warring

We particulry liked anarchist as it has the word 'kiss' again contrasting rebellious with sweetness, also adding sexuality to the group which will be necessary to appeal to the target audience of indie rock/ soul music, particularly as we have a lead female singer (see mood board for more details on sexuality of women in the media).

Dog days are over lyrics

Dog Days Are Over Lyrics

Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink


The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
Because here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
Because here they come

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your loving, your loving behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
Because here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Audience feedback

After showing our treatment slide show to the class they wrote their opinions of it on sheets of paper and we gathered them in to read to have an insight on what they thought about our idea.

We decided to Make a wordle making us aware of the strengths and weaknesses of our idea.

Here is our wordle showing our audience feedback from our treatment, the inspirational tag refers to our use of videos in our treatment and analysis of them.

Treatment Pitch

Treatment for 'Dog Days are Over'

A treatment is an outline of a media production which is designed to give a client or a production team an overview of what the production may be based on in an overview. The treatment will include written descriptions about the production, it may have sketches, photographs and videos which are designed to demonstrate the production. A media treatment is used to sell the production to a client or a production company. A treatment is a long process but it is a major aspect of the pre-production process.

Wordle

I have made a 'worldle' that displays words I think Describe the Pop Soul Music Genre