Audience Theory

Three Main Theory's:

• The Effects Model or Hypodermic 
• Uses & Gratification
• Reception

Uses & Gratification (Blumer & Katz:

We are not a totally passive audience, we control what we do and what we watch. This theory argues that when we do watch a violent film, we are not necessarily influenced by the violence. For example take a media text, a horror, by seeing the actions and consequences of what unfolds in the text, it will prevent us from doing so for we know what would happen.
The audience has the power to watch what we want, and don't watch parts we don't want to watch. Diversion, escapism, information, pleasure etc.

The Reception theory (Stuart Hall 1970):

- Texts are encoded by producers, the audience or viewer then decode the message. Hall came up with his own theory, the Reception theory, though it was not necessarily his 'own' so to speak, it had been around for years, though he did re-define it for the modern age. Hall said audience members adopt one of the three following

+ Dominant, or Preferred, Reading - How the producer wants the audience to interpret the media text.

+ Oppositional Reading - When the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own meaning for the text.

+ Negotiated Reading - A compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producers views, but has their own views on parts also.

Effects Model:

The Effects Model is a theory many will know, but not know the actual name for it. This is basically when a viewer, especially a young viewer would take inspiration from a film or media text they have seen and perhaps re-enact it. The effects aren't always seen as negative, but most of the time they are. The power lies within the message of the text. The most famous case perhaps is the murder of James Bulger in 1993. The two boys who murdered him said they were inspired by video games they had been playing and also the slasher film 'Childs Play 3'. People have debated this theory for years, but its clear that media texts have a lot of inspiration and influence over viewers, especially younger viewers. Films like this are often banned, for example take the cult classic 'A Clockwork Orange', the 70's hit was based in an alternate Britain rife with crime. The film itself was technically beautiful but was full of violence and brutality.

How does audience theory relate to my trailer?
My doesn't necessarily feature much blood and gore, I tend to rely more on tension and suspense It's more psychologically challenging. Nevertheless it's still a violent horror film with scenes young viewers, and even older viewers will find disturbing that's why it is rated a 15. Clearly stated on the trailer itself, poster and magazine to not allow younger viewers to see it.

(Warning, this trailer is for those over the age of 18)