1B - Audience

Media consumers are organised into identified groups (based on such things as lifestyle or earning power) by producers, broadcasters, and advertisers who can then target consumers. In this essay I am going to evaluate the film opening I created with my group called 'Untamed' about a teenage girl who has an argument with her mother and runs away one night after coming home drunk without her permission. Im going to also discuss three theories which also helped shape the creating and excecution of our media product.
Audiences choose to consume certain text such as social media, film, television programmes and magazines because it is a form of entertainement, it is usually popular among their group of friends therefore they want to fit in and see what the hype is about, and often it gives the audience something to relate to so they do not feel like the only one going through a certain situation. These texts are consumed online through phones or laptops, or they can be read through magazines or newspaper articles. When they consume these texts, they then share their experience with it and often recommend it to the people around them which gives it more publicity and popularity.
There are key features when looking at the audiences of media texts, one of them being the theory of the 'Hypodermic Model' or the 'Effects Model' which is the theory of 'injecting' information into the audience which may be factual or just something that the media wants the audience to see. In some cases this has been used as a means of control over the audience/public like when it was used by Adolf Hitler for propaganda. It is also used a lot in advertisements as a way of the company trying to persuade people to buy its product as it creates a 'hype' for the product, therefore making it more popular. In our production we did not use the theory of the 'Hypodermic Model' as our narrative was only one that was intended for pure entertainment and not to persuade our audience like how an advertisement would. However, the stereotypical representation of the teenage daughter and the middle aged mother may sunconsciously give the audience an assumption about the way these groups of people act in real life, even though the film cannot possiblty speak on behalf of everyone within the group.
The 'Uses and Gratifications' theory is also another reason why audiences consume certain media texts. One of the reasons within this theory is so the audience can relate to what they are watching. People like to watch programmes like 'Eastenders' not only for the entertainment but so they can relate to a character or a storyline as the programme consists of ordinary people, and by watching it, it may make them feel better about their own situation. I believe that this is similar to 'Untamed' as the argument between the mother and the daughter is very similar to ones that have happened between family members all over the country which gives the teenagers something they can relate to so they feel like they are not the only ones. People also consume media texts so they can recieve information about world events, therefore read newspapers and watch documentaries and programmes like 'Quesion Time' to learn new facts. Audiences also consume the texts simply for their own entertainment, especially with popular TV series such as 'Broadchurch', 'Marcella' and 'Big Little Lies' because they are gritty and exciting to watch. Social interaction is also another main reason for it as after looking at the text, the audience can then speak about it with their piers so they can have something to speak about and relate to eachother with.
Hall's 'Reception Theory' is also another way in which audiences consumer certain media texts and how the interpret the information based on their situation or background. He states that there are three different types of people when it comes to audiences: Dominant, Negotiated and Oppositional. Dominants traditionally fully shares the text code and accepts and reproduced the preferred reading and the code seems 'natural' ad 'transparent'. A Negotiated reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests which involves contradictions. An oppositional reader understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects the reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference.
We targetted our teenage audience by using a rebellious teenage girl as the main character and a contrasting middle aged mum for her to have a conflict with because we knew that it is a very relatable and entertaining situation for teens, which they can compare with their own lives. Our audience enjoyed our film opening because they said it was very dramatoc and entertaining, also because of the good music behind it which is popular with the teen crowd, and they also said it had a lot of enigma which made them want to watch more. We worked out that we wanted to have a teen/ young adult audience because we felt that the genre was very successful, and we worked out what they like by assessing ourselves what films we like in our group as we are all teenage girls, and also looked at similar films of the same genre.
In conclusion the audience plays an essential role when analysing the success of our film opening as they decide whether the film is good enough or worth watching. Their opinion is then spread to their piers which could also influence how they see the media text which could either make the film a success or a failure.