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.