Post 7: Audience Theory

Audience theory is a starting point within media tasks. Audience theory is something you need to consider in media because it needs to consider the target audience and how the audience will respond to the media text. Media texts are transmitted and this may influence peoples behaviour to things.
The effects model such as the theory called the Hypodermic Needle was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences react to mass media. This idea is that information within the media text is passively transmitted. The Hypodermic Needle were an injected message, and are passively received.
Other theories within the effects model is the Desensitisation which said that the more violence we see the more desensitised we become to it and the less shocked we are in real life.
Copycat Theory states that individuals may act out what they see modelled on T.V. An example of this may be the Jamie Bulger Case.
The Dominant- Hegemonic Reading is one in which consumers unquestioningly accept the message that the producers are transmitting to them.

I did independent research and watch four short films and I analysed them and looked for possible audience receptions.

For this short film I looked on the BBC for short films and I watched one called 'The Hive'. This film started off very dark with a man in a van. It shows him holding a tin box with something in it. In the box it shows money and this is making the audience question where this money has come from and what the man is doing in the van when it is really dark. The uses and gratifications theory helps us think about the identity of this man and it also says that situations such as this helps the audience to learn more about the character.

Another short film which I watched was from a DVD which is called 'Life's Too Short' the short film on this was called 'Tenner'. This film has a big impact on the audience as it makes them intrigued into what the real story is behind it. This becomes clear by the end of the film. At the beginning of this film you see a teenage boy vandalising a shop and shouting at the shop keeper. The boy lives with an older man which appears to be his grandad. The boy gets into a lot of trouble of a regular basis. The teenager then goes to a hard ware store and he takes some sand paper and begins to rub his leg by his ankle with the sand paper which causes it to bleed. The audience is unaware of why he is doing this and makes them confused and also interested in the reason behind him doing this. The audience reads from this is that the boy is self-harming but it becomes clear to why he has done this to himself. In the next part the boy is back at home when the door knocks and his grandad answers the door. There is a man in a black suit with a silver metal box. The audience questions who this man is and what he is doing there, also to what is in the box. The boy comes into the room and the man takes out of the box a police tag. He asks the boy to roll up his trouser leg to place it on his leg and he has a bandage on one leg and cuts on the other from the sand paper. He puts it on the leg with the bandages and the man leaves. After he has left the boy shows that this leg is in fact a false leg. Throughout the film there is flash backs of the boy on his bike and has been hit by a car and this is revealed to the audience that he lost his leg when he was hit by a car. The car was driven by the shopkeeper and the audience becomes clear to why the boy reacted in the way he did and also the reason to why he vandalised the shop. 

I watched another short film from the DVD in which I mentioned above was another short film called 'Jade'. Jade is about a teenage school girl and she finds herself in a difficult situation. She has a boyfriend who she does not appear to be interested in and tries to avoid. The audience reads this as her not wanting to be with him anymore. In one scene she is sitting in the school toilets with and she holds her hands together and reveals she is holding a pregnancy test. It shows that she is pregnant. Some of the audience who will watch this would be shocked by this as they may not agree with it or they have never experienced someone being in this particular situation. Others may not be as shocked by this as they have either watched other films which have the same story line so this message has been passively received that things such as this do happen and may not be shocked. Jade has a job at a caravan site and it is later revealed that she has a relationship with an older man. The audience such as me would feel uncomfortable watching this this as they do not agree with what is happening is right. This makes the audience question who the father is. This particular short film audiences may react in different ways depending on whether they have been revealed to these particular situations.

Post 6: Representation Theory

Representation is a key concept in media studies. In media there are representations of things such as social groups, gender, age, class and race. Through media texts representations are portrayed and these are very important because these groups have to be portrayed in a careful way. Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. Representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors.

This is a diagram to show how the process of showing representations are constructed.

The main idea about representation is its concern with the way in which representations are made to seem ‘natural’. Systems of representation are the means by which the concerns of ideologies are framed; such systems ‘position’ their subjects.

Semiotics is a main concept in analysing representation. Semiotics was the idea that you can read signs given within a piece of media text. The sign is given through a representation of something and has a meaning behind it and an example of this may be a really expensive car may represent the class of someone and this representation immediately tells us something about the character before we have been introduced to the character. Semiotics are a main method to use with representations because it informs the audience of the representation of the character in which they are trying to portray without giving the audience anymore information.


In class we have studied short films and we looked at different ones to try and identify the representations which were being portrayed throughout the short film. We watched the same clip over again to see if we could recognise all of the representations within the short film.

To get an angle on representation we looked at a clip from the TV drama Doctor Who. We watched the same clip more than once to try and identify all of the representations shown throughout the clip. In this clip

the representations are very clear to see because within the first few seconds of the clip it shows the Doctor giving the lady instructions to follow straight away and this represents the idea of male dominance over women. Also shown in this part is the age representation because the man is older than the woman so he feels that he is more superior to her and he feels that he can order her around to do what he wants her to do and this is also showing the dominance in which the man has over the woman within this particular clip.
Also in this clip the woman character is strongly represented in her sexual aspect because when she is talking to the man she is playing with her hair and this is an act of a sexual representation and she does this purely for the man's attention and this is backed up by her saying to the Doctor that she would do anything to get what she wants. The woman is trying to impress the man because he is of a higher status and she is trying to be approved by him because the man has dominance over her. Known as the Doctor's assistant Billy Piper's costume is red and her make up and long hair conform to stereotypical representations of women.  It is quite clear that Piper's character construction appeals to the male gaze, (Laura Mulvey).

A short film which we watched was called 'Tender'. This was directed by Deborah Haywood in 2009. This short film is about a school boy called Liam who wins some money on a scratch card but he keeps this quiet from his mum and his mum's boyfriend.  Liam is the unwanted son and his 'step father' is not much older than Liam is. A girl at school finds out about the money and she gets interested and uses him to buy her gifts. Violence and unhappiness dominate the film.

The representations in this short film is centred around representation of class. The house is a big part of the representation, the front door's glass panel is smashed, inside the house is untidy. The relationship between the boy and his mum is represented in a negative way as they do not have much of a relationship, the mother has an open sexual relationship with her boyfriend in front of her son, clearly this is a representation if a dysfunctional family. When they find out that Liam has won money they are mad at him and take it off him. The girl at his school when she finds out that he has won money she uses him and this represents her being greedy and selfish because she does not actually like him she uses him for the money. To obtain more money Liam sells his PlayStation to a local, the local man is represented as fat and clearly not working. There are several scenes of violence. The representation of class is very negative.

Another short film was directed and written by Daniel Elliott and it is called 'Jade'. This short film was about a school girl who has a boyfriend but she becomes very distant from his as we realise that she has been with someone else but this man is a lot older than she is. She later finds out that she is pregnant and she is unsure of who the father is. In this short film the representations are shown through age. Age representation is shown by the teenage school girl seeing a man around the age of 30. This representation may be seen as being uncomfortable for the audience to watch as this may not be seen as morally right in today's society. Some people may see this as a man being dominant and superior to a young girl and may be seen as she is being taken advantage of. Also the age of the girl being pregnant may also be seen in a negative way in today's society because people do not believe that a girl of her age would be able to support and bring up a baby. This may also be a representation of the class of her home life in which she has been brought up in.

Post 5: Narrative Theory

What does narrative mean?
-How meaning is constructed to achieve audience understanding
-A voice of the narrative can vary: whose story is being told and from whose perspective
-Narrative plot refers to everything audibly or visibly present i.e. selective
-Narrative story refers to all the events, explicitly presented and inferred
-Organises time and space in very compresses form
-Constructed through camerawork, lighting, mise-en-scene
-Groups events into cause and effect- action and event.
-Narrative reflects ideologies. Ideologies is a set of ideas, values and beliefs that are often taken for granted and go unchallenged. Dominant ideology is the general set of values and beliefs widely held throughout society and may be seen as helping to sustain particular power relations in that society.

"Narrative is a way of organising space and time into a cause an effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of events." (Edward Brannigan)

"The world 'comes to us' in the shape of stories... (which) provide us with and easy, unconscious and involving way of constructing our social experience." (Graeme Turner)

Barthes had the idea of the five action codes, these were...
-Hermeneutic code: an element of the story not explained, unanswered questions that make us think
-Proairetic code: builds up tension- an indication something is going to happen- the reader/viewer starts to guess
-Semantic code: connotations, extended meaning
-Symbolic code: symbolism
-Cultural codes: things we believe in our culture

Barthes also had the idea of the enigma codes. Enigma codes means images/sequences which control how much we know in the story, engaging and holding audience interest. They present puzzles which demand to be solved.

Post 4: Genre as a Media Concept

"How did the notion of category evolve or shift into genre? Whose interests do generic ideas serve?" (McDougall. J)

In the film industry there are different categories of film which appeals to certain audiences and over time film industries have shifted into genre and this allows the film companies to have more knowledge about what the audience wants from films. Different genres of film interests different audiences and film industries use the knowledge they have from this and use it to make themselves more money because they are aware of audience interest.
Film makers used to only look at producing films that would only relate to a particular audience such as women, men or children etc. Films were made specifically in certain categories which they believed the audience they were targeting would like. Over time the notion of categories has developed and this means that the specific categories of film have evolved into many different types of genre such as rom-com, action and adventure, horror etc. In the film industry today there are many different types of genre and even sub genres. They each have a different target audience whether this is male or female or even age etc. Different genre films can appeal to different audiences and genre has allowed different audiences such as men and women to watch the same genre of film. Film companies look at what film genres are being successful with the audience and they would make more films within this genre as they know that they will make money from it.
The audience seeks gratification and pleasure by decoding the encoded meaning in generic films. The film makers who encode the films produce the films for the audience to decode it as this means they are able to unravel the storyline and this allows the audience to become more involved. The way in which film companies make more money from their audience is if they have had a successful film they may go on to make a second one of the same film and example of this is Bridget Jone's Diary. The film company shows that by doing this is easy money to make.
A disadvantage for film companies to keep producing the same genre of film is that their audience may want to watch something new as they feel they have watched the same style of film too many times.
Therefore, the notion categories of genre shifting into genre has made it easier for film industries to know what the audience wants and it makes it easier for them to produce films and it also helps them make more money as they have the knowledge of what it wanted from the audience.


With this new understanding of genre this will help me when coming to make my own short film. The reasons for this is because if I research into what genres of film recently have been most popular with the audience I will look into how I would construct a short film around this area of genre. The reason why this would help is because if you have the knowledge of what is wanted from the audience then your film would be more of a success. Also by have different types of genre such as comedy then this type of genre would enable different types of the audience to be attracted to it whereas, when films were in categories of men, women and children for example, people would not be able to socialise as much because they are set to their own category of film.

Post 3: Skills Table

In the previous post I showed a way in which I could remember all of the personal skills in which I had learnt over time. I made a table and showed which skills I used differently for each task I had done in the past. In the table it shows that during different stages of each tasks I showed different skills as they were required for different parts of the production stages. This is the table which I created..

In this table it shows that during the continuity task for the digital technology stage I had wrote down team work and independent thinking whereas, in the opening sequence task of digital technology I also included effective participant and this is showing that how my skills have developed during the stages of the continuity production. There are other examples such as this in the table and this is showing how my skills have developed over time of different productions. 

Post 2: Creativity

Creativity refers to whereby a person creates something new e.g. a product, a solution, a work of art etc that has some kind of value. Creativity is about having the ability or to have the power to create something or bring something into existence.
This is the website which I looked on to find out the definition of creativity..

http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/creativ/define.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

As a class we played a game called consequences and we all started off with a sheet of paper and first of all we had to write the word 'the' followed by an adjective and then fold the piece of paper over so the next person could not see it, the next person writes a noun, the next writes a verb, the next writes the word 'the' followed by another adjective and the last person writes a noun. This is the one that returned to me and this is how it came out:
The exhausted goat rollerskates the heavy bed.

I have done my own independent work to show how creative I can be and I have decided to spell the word creativity out of things which are in my house. I then put all of the pictures onto the computer and placed them together and I am very happy with the way that it has turned out. I found it challenging to find different objects which I could use to spell out the different letters. 

In our class we got into groups of four and we was given a task to create a short video and the idea of the short video was to create something around the object of a pen. The video had to include a pen in it and as a group we could create anything we wanted to around this pen. Also in this short film we would not be able to edit the shots so therefore we had to film in the exact order we wanted it to be shown and also had to think about the continuity of the shots. In my group our idea was about a school girl wanting to run for head girl in her school council. We showed her practising her speech to her friends and then she panics because she has lost her 'lucky pen'. The girl searches around the room for this pen and her friends are laughing at her because her pen is in her hair. Eventually her friends tell her that it is in her hair. We then showed this to our teacher and she thought that we did not have enough shots in our short video so we tried it again. This time we used a different location and it worked out better as we was able to use more shots and the story line of the video was more understood. This is our short video that we made...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWuczQPOOpA&feature=player_embedded

Post 1: Introduction

The term 'skills' means the ability which is coming from a persons knowledge, practice etc. It means to do something well in a particular area, so you have the 'skills' for that area. It also means an excellence in performance. An example is saying that the dancer performed with skill.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skill


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill


The definition of 'skills' is that a person has a particular level of expertise in a particular area. They have the knowledge and can perform well in that area and example of this in terms of using skills in media production is that you personally may be better at doing the camera work and have the understanding of this whereas, someone else in your group may not be as good at this area and may be better in the area of acting for the media production and this shows that you have more skills in one area than another.

My own definition of 'skills' is that a person has a special quality in one particular aspect of something. This could be a profession or a hobby etc. Like my example above of a dancer, this person has a particular skill in the profession or the hobby of dance. I think that by having a skill is personal to an individual an every person has a different skill.

Over the past two years of doing media there are certain skills in which I have learnt. These all are very effective when doing media. All of these things are very important, and they are called personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS).
-Team work
-Creativity Thinking
-Independent Enquiry
-Reflective Learner
-Self- Managers
-Effective Participant

The way we was taught to remember all of these words was by putting them into a sentence to help us remember them. This is the sentence which we as a class made up...
In Elephant Town Chris the Rhino Spread Marmite on his Egg Plant thinking about Toast.