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)

Filming Log #4

Magazine Draft No. 2

This is the second draft of my magazine, originally I was going to create my own magazine called "PURGED" but after multiple drafts and weeks of trying to find the right style I decided to use an existing magazine, and I've chosen EMPIRE. EMPIRE is an international seller and is one of the biggest magazines in circulation, and arguably the biggest movie based magazine out there. This is only my first draft of my new magazine so there's a lot of work that needs to be done. The hardest part is filling the pages with articles making sure they are in line and in the right place, it needs to look professional as if someone would actually buy the magazine. I am currently awaiting feedback from my teacher, I'm going to keep working on it over the next few days and hopefully I'll get come constructive feedback to improve my magazine. The main thing that is missing at the minute is the main image, like with my poster I had not taken any actual photos for my auxiliary products so I am planning to go out and film tomorrow with Thomas and Luke and we will be getting footage for the trailer but also taking some photos for my poster and magazine, I plan on taking quite a few so I can pick and choose what fits best.

Poster Draft No. 4

Draft 4, nearly finished. Upon receiving feedback from my teacher I made all the alterations I needed to. Firstly, I have changed the credit block, before it seemed like a list and the text was a bit to large, it was also to far into the middle of the page. So I changed the font size, added more to it and set it out better so it stretches to further across the poster. Then I changed the tag line "THE NIGHT IT CAME HOME" it was to small and did not stand out compared to anything else on the poster. The title "CASSETTE I" I also changed, again like the tagline it was too small and along with the main image, the title should be one of the first things that stands out, and it didn't. So I enlarged it after I made more room by altering the credit block. Also along the bottom I noticed that I had a British age rating of 15 but also an American G rating, reading "All Ages Admitted" which I did not notice, so i took it out and kept the British 15 rating. I also fixed the font for WWW.CASSETTEFILM.COM for before it looked like more like an armed forces font. Then I included my company logo, Gladewick Productions. The final thing I must do is find a new main image, I did notice at first the photo was quite creepy but wasn't very clear for it was a screenshot from the trailer itself, and also my teacher pointed that out. Tomorrow we are going out to film some more of our trailer and I am going to take a couple of new shots and decide which one I am going to use on my front cover.

Many of the changes made are minor and you would probably not notice at first glance unless compared to my other three drafts, but nonetheless they are effective. I am hoping to have the final poster finished and on my blog by tomorrow evening.

Poster Draft No. 3

This is my third draft and I'm very happy with it. I added a few more features, the tagline along the top of the poster and the 'general audiences', website link, and 'dolby digital' logo. I also put my main image into Pixlr and edited it. I darkened the nostrils, and mainly concentrated on the left hand side of the face for it was far brighter than the other side before i edited it, and it stood out significantly. I prefer using Pixlr to Photoshop, despite photoshop being generally better software. One, its easier to use, and two I wasn't doing very advanced editing, just shading in the face and manipulating the general brightness of the photo. I am waiting on opinion of my teacher to see what else I need to to or what could be changed.

Revising Locations

Another one of the issues with our old script was actually getting to the locations, one of the locations we tried to use an old abandoned steel mill was locked by the council because it was deemed dangerous, and setting plays a huge part in film so when you are not able to use a specific setting you planned to use, it really affects the rest of the film. Even the woods became near impossible to film in due to bad weather, it was just to muddy and unsafe due to steep and slippy terrain. So this really effected the film, then we decided to re-write the plot with new locations. The new locations are far safer and easier to get to, but still great places where I can get some good shots. I would also like to base my plot around the setting, it really helped me re-write the story. I'd like to shoot quite a bit of the trailer in my own house, a big part of the film is isolation and the feeling that the protagonist is being watched, driving him into his home in fear. We have already done a bit of filming with new locations, and putting filters and effects over footage really helps set atmosphere and a level of suspense I've found. 

 - This shot pictured above is one of the newer pieces of footage, we took this at a path near my house that leads into a field by a lake. I have included this in the new storyboard for I believe there are quite a few good shots we could get out here. Also this is what I mean by adding effects and filters, it was quite a sunny day, not very intimidating. So I altered the brightness and put a filter over the footage and it has a very eerie look, especially when you see the actual footage with the backing track. Very effective.

- The shot pictured below took us nearly an hour to get, we had to go into my attic but its very cluttered and not a lot of room to move and because we couldn't see the camera screen it really was just a case of trial and error. We couldn't see where his headd was until he came down, I went up and watched the footage. Eventually we thought, go up, but move up and down so start high and gradually come lower so we definitely get your head in the shot. This is a scene I really want to re-shoot because it could be very effective, but I'd like to get more of his body in it and more of the attic.

25 Word Pitch including Youtube Video

"A teen psychological horror, featuring a constant state of paranoia and unease with an unnamed stalker who is ever watching, waiting for the right moment"