Audience Theory

There are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.

1. The effects model or the hypodermic model.
2. The uses and gratifications model.
3. Reception theory

The Effect model

• The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience.
• It is normally considered that this effect is negative.
• Audience are passive and powerless to prevent the influence.
• The power lies with the message of the text.

This model is also called:

The Hypodermic mode

• Here, the message in media texts are injected into the audeince by the powerful syringe - like media.
• The audience is powerless to resist.
• Therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is druggged,addicted, doped or duped.

Key evidence for the effects model.

1. The Frankfurt school theorised in the 1920s and 30s that that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments.
2. The Bobo Doll experiment.
This is a very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour.

• This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura

The Effects Model ( The Bobo Doll Experiment)

In the experiment:

• Children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a Bobo Doll.
• The children were then taken to a room with attractive toys that were not permitted to touch.
• The children were led to anohter a room with Bobo Dolls.
• 88% of children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behaviour.

The conclusion reached was that children will imitate violent media content. 

• There are many problems with the experiment.
• The effect model is still the dominant theory used by politicians, (some parts of the media and some religious organisations) in attributing violence to the consumption of media texts.  
• Key examples cited as causing or being contributory factors are:-

1. The film child's play 3 in the murder of James Bulger in 1993.
2. The game manhunt in the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlanc.
3. The film A Clockwork Orange (1971) in a number of rapes and violent attacks. 
4. The film Severance (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt.

 In each case there was a media and political outeryfor the texts to be banned. In some cases laws were cheanged, films were banned and newspapers demanded the burning of films. Subsequently, in each case it was found that no case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent acts. The effects model contributes to Moral panics whereby: 

• The media produce inactivity, make us into students who won't pass their exams or 'couch potatoes' who make no effort to get a job.
• The media produces violent 'copycat' behaviour or mindless shopping in response to advertisements.

The Uses and Gratification Model

It is still unclear that there is any link between the consumption of violent media texts and violent imitative behaviour. It is also clear the theory is flawed in that many people do watch violent texts and appear not to be influenced. Therefore a new theory is necessary. This is called the USES AND GRATIFICATION MODEL. 

• The uses and gratification model is the opposite of the effects model. 
• The audience is active
• The audience uses the text and is not used by it. 
• The audience uses the text for its ow gratification or pleasure.

Here, power lies with the audience not the producers. This theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts- how and why they use them. Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meaning as they see fit.

• Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:- 

1. Diversion 
2. Escapism
3. Information
4. Pleasure
5. Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one's own.
6. Sexual stimulation 

• The audience is in control and consumption of the media helps with issues such as:

1. Learning
2. Emotional satisfaction
3. Relaxation
4. Help with issues of personal identity
5. Help with issues of social identify
6. Help with issues of aggression and violence

Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful rather than harmful. The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the consumption of media violence. The audiences inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated, and they are less likely to commit violent acts. 

Reception Theory

Since the Effects model and the Uses and Gratification's have their problems and limitations, a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970s.

This consider how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences. 

The theory suggests that:

• When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning ormessage that the producer wishes to convey to the audience. 
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message ormeaning and understand what the producer was trying to stay. 
• In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message. 

The Gaze

The Gaze' of the camera is the male 'gaze', the male gaze is active whilst the female is passive. Within the narrative male characters direct their gaze towards femlae characters. The spectator is made to identify with the male gaze becaause the camera films from the optical, as well as libidinal point of view of the male character. Thus three levels of the cinematic gaze-camera, character and spectator that objectify the female character this is known as the triple gaze. 

Agency

• In the Classical Hollywood cinema the male protagonist has agency - he is active and powerful.
• He is the agent around whom the dramatic action unfolds.
• The female character is passive and powerless - she is the object of desire for protagonist and audience.

Erotic Desire

Laura Mulvey argues that women have two roles in a film:- 

1. As an object of erotic desire for the characters.
2. As an object of erotic desire for the audience.

Filming in the Drama studio

We tried  to record in the drama  room but then we decided it was not the right location for our song so we changed the location and decided to travel to London late night and compared the locations with each other.




The difference was clear to see and we certainly preferred to travel the distance to London to try and ensure that we get the best grade possible because the location was very beautiful for us.

Meeting

As there are only two of us in our group things are a lot more difficult for us and therefore we have arranged various meetings to try and give our self aims and objectives so we know when we have to finish things buy because editing on the I mac is very difficult with just two people.


our next meeting is next week so we can decide on more things for the video and decide on methods were going to use when we edit our video on final cut express.

We had to return to re-film

Unfortunately due to our high standards of work we were not satisfied with the filming we did on the first day so we went back to film the parts that we felt needed to be better so we had to travel again all the way to London and we changed something in the video.




As we were walking we noticed another beautiful location that would go very well with our theme of a dark night with glowing lights so we decided to film there.

First day of filming

Today we filmed our first part of the music which was in central London near the London eye, it was very cold however we still made our best efforts to travel all the way down there because we knew the location was a very good location because of the festive season which meant that the city would be full of glowing lights which would  go very well with the type of video that we were trying to display.

This exactly were we filmed some of our shots and the lighting was incredibly beautiful which just made us want to film here we filmed different shots here.

We then took a bus and traveled to the Tower Bridge so we could also film a scene with all the beautiful lights. This is a very important part of our music video with the consistency of the lighting.