Archive for May 2017

Audience theory relates to how the audience respond to and interpret any given text. The media audiences can be defined in terms of location, consumption, size and subjectivity. Depending on the audience, they may interpret our A2 teaser trailer, a psychological horror on 4 protagonists who are psychologically damaged in different ways. Our teaser trailer is aimed towards people over 15 years as a US-style blockbuster film. Halloran, suggested that researchers should shy away from thinking “what media do to people”, and instead replace it with “what people do to media”, which links in with the idea that there are two types of audiences, active and passive. If the audience is passive, they receive unmediated messages from the media that heavily influences them, whilst an active audience is aware of the media and they are in control of what they consume from it.

The Hypodermic Needle Theory by Adorno & Horkheimer is a passive audience theory, which suggests that information from a text passes into the mass consciousness unmediated. It is also used to explain why certain groups in society shouldn’t be exposed to certain media texts; for fear that they will watch that behaviour and replicate it.

In our trailer, we chose to explore this through the perceived glorification of violence by the main protagonists. To do this, we decided to have two costumes, both of which have signifiers of urban youth. One costume, features light coloured, urban-style tops and jackets, whilst the other, features dark coloured, torn, ripped t-shirts, jeans and masks.

In an establishing shot, we see two of our protagonists breaking the 4th wall by staring into the camera in an extreme close-up shot, as if to intimidate the audience, adhering to the stereotypes propagated by the media about reckless youth. Additionally, our choice to have two costumes emphasises that, to the protagonists, violence and murder is almost like a game, and that it’s almost ‘trendy’ to be this unruly in society.

We highlight this again by having a close-up shot in high key lighting of blood running upwards of a hand, then several handheld mid-shots of the protagonists spinning mindlessly in the forest, dancing near the waterfront, their outlines illuminated by the city lights and extreme close-up handheld shots of the protagonists laughing into the camera. Moreover, we used a VHS style glitch over the shots to suggest that they are being watched, and that they enjoy displaying their unruly behaviour, stressing that this type of behaviour may be replicated in youths of that age.

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