Revising so far - Sophie Bishop

Audience:

McDougall - With the online age it is getting harder to identify a stable audience. but they still give meaning to cultural products. Mass, Niche, mainstream and alternative.

Hall - Encoding and decoding and preferred/negotiated and oppositional readings of texts.

McQuail - Gratification theory - costume text for surveillance, personal identity, personal relationships, escapism/diversion. 
High culture- dominant and powerful groups - appreciation of traditional - ballet and opera.
low/popular culture - Everything not approved by high culture. consider vulgar and common by the high.

Ang - ''audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstraction, constructed from the vantage point of the institution in the interest of the institution'' - So the institution imagines the audience before the media product is made.

Hartley - ''Institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience, but crucially, for them to talk to one as well; they need not only represent audiences but to enter into relation with them'' - institutions must produce - ''invisible fictions of the audience which allow the institutions to get a sense f who they must enter into the relations with'' e.g they must know their audiences so they can target them effectively.

Audience reception theories:
Passive - accepting

Active -  resisting

Hypodermic - 
the marxist theory - relationship with audience reactions and consumption of media texts - passive, elitist and simplistic. 

Narrative:

Todorov - believes three steps in a narrative.
Equilibrium - Balance in both forces/oppositions.
Disequilibrium - A loss of stability, no balance.
New-equilibrium - resolved, back to balance

Levi-strauss - Binary opposites - e.g evil v good

Barthes 
Enigma code - the question, puzzle/riddle
denote - what the audience see encoded by the director
connote - what the audience sees it to mean themselves.
action code - a narrative way/device to show a resolution.

Propp - Character types:
The hero
The villain
The donor
The dispatcher
The false hero
The helper
The princess (heroin)

Cook - The hollywood narrative.Cause and effective.


Representation:

Dyer - Analysing media representation
1. what sense of the world is it making?
2. What does it imply? Is it typical of the world deviant?
3.Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?
4. What does it represent to us why? how do we respond to the representation?
5. Marxism
6. Feminism
7.Postmodernism
8.Stereotypes

Suggests Klapps distinction can be reworked in terms and typos produced by different social groups

Klapps - Distiction between stereotypes and social types is helpful.

Mulvey - Argues that the dominant point of view is masculine. The female body is displayed for male gaze. 

Berger - ''ways of seeing'', ''men act woman appear'', ''men look at woman. women watch themselves being looked act'', ''woman are aware of begin seen by a male spectator''.

McDougall - ''In a media saturated world, the distinction between reality and media representations become blurred and invisible to us''

Baudrillard - Hyper reality - simulations of reality, replace the real.

Genre: 

Chandler- Created the word genre, which means a style or category of media. All genres have sub genres.

Neale - Not a structure but a process. These are what goes into the process: Genre characteristics, including: Typical mise-en-scene/visual style,  typical types of narrative (plots, historical setting and set pieces), generic types (i.e typical characters, do typical male/female roles exist), typical personnel (directors, producers, actors and stars), typical sound design(sound design, dialogue, sic and sound effects) and typical editing style.

Mittell - Genres are a cultural category and genre allows audiences to make a choice.

Altman - Emotional, visceral ('gut' response) and intellectual puzzle pleasures are what Altman believed are an outcome of genre.

Abercrombie - Believes boundaries within genre are changing/shifting.

Buchingham - 'Genre is not simply 'given' by the culture: rather, it is a constant process of negotiation and change'

Sophie Pre Reading - Audience

I

Sophie Bishop - Pre reading audience theory

Julian McDougall
Say's that in the online age, it is getting harder to identify a stable audience.Mass, Niche, mainstream and alternative.

Stuart Hall
Encoding decoding text, preferred/negotiated, oppositional readings.

Denis McQuail
Uses and gratification theory (audiences consume media texts for surveillance, personal identity, personal relationships, escapism/diversion. definition of 'Popular culture' as 'low' culture, not for the elite, bur for 'common' people.

Len Ang
Detailed that media producers have an imaginary entity in mind before the construction of media product.  ''Audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstraction, constructed from the vantage point of the institution in the interest of the institution''
You must detail the social demographic of your target audience, gender, age, ethnicity and social class.

John Hartley
''Institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience, but crucially, for them to talk to one as well; they need not only represent audiences but to enter into relation with them''
Institutions must produce
''Invisible fictions of the audience which allow the institutions to get a sense of who they must enter into relations with'' e.g they must know their audience so they can target them effectively.

Hypodermic 
The Marxist theory, which was championed by theorists such as Adorno, assumes a direct stimulus-response relationship between audiences reactions and the consumption of media texts.

Criticisms:
Does not allow the resistance or rejection of media texts.
Elitist
Simplistic

theorist from the thriller last year

Claude Levi - Strauss, Brinary Oppositions

During our thriller we used Brinary opposites to show to opposites set off against each other. 

Examples of Brinary Oppositions are:

These screenshots show two different characters, being against each other. 

Reception Theory, Stuart Hall

During our thriller we used the Reception theory to show opposition. The reception theory is normally used within in literacy, but when used in filmed media (our sequence) it allows the audience to find their own meaning and interpretation. 

Examples of the Reception Theory are: 

The audience wouldn't know why this character is travelling on the train.

The audience could be thinking 

Why is he on the train?

Where is he going?

Vladmir Propps, argues that narrative always have certain character types who perform certain actions. Characters are agents of actions.

We had a villain and a hero. But we didn't show the stereotype. For example our villain was a woman and our hero was a man, normally within films its the other way around.

Roland Barnes, Enigma code; Action code. Also open, and closed texts.

An enigma code creates mystery and question for the audience.

Who is she?

Why is she walking around London?

Why is she the only character in colour?

We didn't show/give the audience the idea of who the villain was until the end of the opening sequence. This created an enigma code.

Tim O'Sullivan (1998) - argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story

By showing our character doing different tasks around London it creates a story for the audience to think about.

By using different theorists in our thriller, this will help and gain us skill when creating our music video. 

The Brinary opposition goes along with the idea for our music video as we are showing somebody fighting demons. The reception theory will allow the audience to get their own view of the character in our music video, so if he should be able to now life a happy life or if his demons should still follow him. 

Genre

Daniel Chandler (2001)

Term is used in a literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive type of 'text'

Steve Neale (1995)

Genres are dynamic and envolve overtime.

Generic characteristics 

• Typical Mise-en-scene/visual style 
• Typical types of narratives 
• Generic personnel
• Typical sound design 
• Typical editing style

Jason Mittell (2001)

Argues that genres have different boundaries with differentp types of media texts. Operate within the industry and audience. 

Rick Altman (1999)

Different genres offer different types of pleasure.

-Emotional pleasures 

-Viscoral pleasures 

-Intelleotional puzzles

Nicholas Abercrombie (1996) 

'The boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable' 'A steady dismantling of genre'

David Buckingham (1993)

'Genre is not... Simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is a constant process of negotiation and change. 

I think we have a majority of every genre charactisic in our thriller. I feel like we also used part of Mittell's theory as we slightly argued with the genre boundaries (again this being the changing of stereotypes). I felt we had used Steve Neale's theory within our thriller, for example using typical sound design - dark, tense and suspense soundtrack to go along with the thriller and loud foley. With using Altman's theory I felt we had used emotional pleasures - the audience feeling sadness and pity for the male main character. Intelleotional puzzles - suspense, enigma code. I didn't feel that we hadn't showed chandler and buckingham's theories within our thriller, because we didn't we show culture within the thriller.

Our thriller is both traditional and non  traditional - Dismantled it slightly with the change of stereotypes, but yet kept it traditional with the suspense building, character chasing another character thriller type sequence. With costume, props and location also being traditional - costume being quite plain and dark (red, blacks and greys). Characters wearing quite smart/business wear costumes (Smart dress and coat, suit and briefcase) the location was rather traditional with the thriller being set in london (The capital - known landmarks being shown). The props we included were phones and sim cards, showing there was an effect of blackmail happening between the two main characters.

Sophie Gordon Essay

Looking back at my thriller i'm trying to link different theorists with the work I had already created. I looked at the prositives and negatives within the sequence that Sophie and I had created and linked them to Tzetvan Todorov, Roland Barthes and Claude Levi. 

The first theorists I decided to see if my work linked with their theory was Tzetvan Todorov, the theory he created was the argument of the structre of Equilibrium/Disequilibrium/New Equilibrium. I noticed that we did have an equilibrium/Disequilibrium Structure. Within our sequence we showed a female villain who was seen as a strong individual, powerful character. This character was blackmailing a business man, showing that are narrative did contain a structure.

Even though we did show a strong concept for the theory that Tzetvan Todorov created, in some areas and could of shown the theory in a stronger way. For example we did show a disequilibrium structure, this was highly visible. The way we could of  pushed through a more obivious take on the theory would have been to show the male character (who was the hero) being phyiscally shaking with fear. I feel looking back even though we did show the actions of being scared, if we had showed it in a different way it would of not only made the sequecne slightly more intense, but also more interesting for the audience.

I also linked Roland  Barthes with our sequence. Roland created the theory for the Enigma code, Action code and also opened and closed texts. We showed an enigma code very strongly throughout our sequence. We did this by creating an engima code within our thriller. We created suspence and mystery by showing our villain walking around London doing different tasks. We also only showed our villain as the only character in colour. This would of created questions and queries for the audience. These questions wouldn't be answered until the end of the sequence.

Claude Levi - Strauss created the theory of binary opposities. We showed this a huge amount within our thriller. We went aganist the stereotypical  concept and had a female villain and male hero.

Did 'nt finish within the 30 minute time. Need to work on my time keeping and planning skills.

Genre Essay

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional forms of structure?

My production group and I created a thriller opening sequence, in which we also had a sub genre of mystery. We used different forms of theories within our thriller to show the mystery, tension and suspense that we wanted to capture the audience with.

Our thriller was very structured and had generic characteristics placed within the sequence. For example our Mise-en-scene was rather typical, giving the audience the visual style of a traditional thriller. We made sure we shot our thriller in London, we did this to show famous landmarks and show that the characters were in a modern and mature location. Our thriller was based upon a blackmailing between a male and female, so we wanted to show the blackmailer being done in a well known location, this would show the audience that the characters were adults as they worked in the capital of the country.

Our lighting was dark and we also added a black and white filter when editing in final cut pro to create more tension as the audience watched, we didn't want to distract with bright colours and we felt that would break away from the mood we was trying to create. The only colour we did show was red (this being shown on our main character and also props - red telephone boxes)

Again we kept with the typical sound design for a thriller. When creating our soundtrack and foley on garage band we decided to kept the beat of sound quite low and we wanted to create tension that would keep the audience of edge. Also our foley was rather loud, we did this to show importance, for example our main character was wearing high heels. We made this foley loud so the audience would know that she was the main focus and the actions she was doing in that scene would cause a consequence for either of the character by the end of the sequence.

Our thriller argued against different types of boundaries, this would of changed the views for our audience by the sequence not following the normal stereotype rule. In our thriller we decided that we wanted to show a woman blackmailer instead of a male, we did this to show how stereotypes can be broken and that either sex's can manipulate a situation to get what they want. 

We showed different types of pleasures. I felt the main on we produced was emotional pleasure. Our main male character was being blackmailed, this would have an effect on him, causing the audience to hold sadness and pity for him. We showed him as the weaker character by him being shown with a high angle, almost as if the blackmailer was looking at him while he was travelling on a train to work after he had received a call from the female villain.

Also we showed intelleotional puzzles, by using an enigma code to create queries and questions for the audience. We didn't really show the character was being blackmailed until the near end. We also created suspension, tension and fear.

I think our thriller shows both traditional and non-traditional forms of structure. I felt it was shown as a traditional thriller by the way we used costume, props and location. For example our costume expressed that our thriller was traditional. Showing the female character wearing a dress and smart coat and also our male character wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, in traditional thriller business/smart costume is shown, so we kept to the rule that applied with that. The main colours we used were red, blacks and greys, we used these colours to create a dark mood, this would have created suspense for the audience. Again we went along with the traditional concept by the location being set in central London. The we used were also again were traditional to form of thriller structure, we included phones and sim cards, showing there was an effect of black mail happening between the two main characters.

The only thing I felt that was an non-traditional form of structure was that we broke the rule of stereotypes, to which we dismantled it to produce a thriller that was our own. We decided to use a female villain instead of a male. In traditional thrillers it is the other way around.