Audience Profile 'The Big Question'

'The Big Question' will attract a target audience of young adults, within the age range of 15-30. Mostly they will come from an open and accepting culture, western society. 

The target audience will consist mainly of type E's according to demographics. Because of the broad age range, some of my audience will be in education and some employed, so neither will have a massive disposable income and will lead busy lives. 

The younger generation has a large interest in current affairs and others opinions. Our question is an easy way to stimulate these type of discussions, therefore attracting our target audience. 

Generally our content should appeal to aspirers, reformers and explores, personalities and behaviours often associated with our target audience. 

My audience profile has enabled me to prepare for the production of our documentary. When filming we will interview people of our target audience so that our content is relevant and engaging. We will accommodate for their busy lives by making our project short in length and easy to access.


My original audience profile is no longer relevant because of our change of plan, this is my new audience profile.

Research on TV show posters

Change of Name

Our documentary will now be called 'The Big Question' as we feel it is more ambiguous and can be related to all of our episodes - our audience research showed us that 'Speaking Out' was not as engaging and did not appeal to them. After asking their opinions concerning our new title, they have given us a much more positive response. 

Review Questions

I have created a Prezi to review what I have done so far, a place where I can gather information for research and planning and prepare for my evaluation. 

Location Research

I created an emaze presentation to show my location research for Camden Market.

Audience Research for Posters

A group of people will be asked the following questions and the results will help me compose the advert poster for a magazine. The questionnaire will be handed out to a range of different people so that we can attain the most helpful information. 

We will be using these questions because they help us form our poster, asking members of our potential audience about what they would like means that we can create a product that satisfies them, making them more likely to consume our final product, and share the poster with friends, as well as generally draw others towards the poster because it will appeal to them if they like the look and style of it. 

We aim to ask at least 20 people so as to get a range of answers, however preferably we should be aiming for about 50 people so that we have a larger variety and a more realistic scale. 

I predict that the results will conclude that posters will preferably be simple, relatable to the subject of the documentary, colours will be red for action movies etc. People will see adverts on tubes, buses and online, the last one really depends on the person, but we will use it to incorporate aspects of these adverts into ours. 

Applying Uses and Gratification to My Film

When thinking about uses and gratification I know that my audience are looking for because of the five basic assumptions Blumler and Katz came up with - to identify, educate, entertain, social interaction and gaining a sense of security through knowledge.

My audience want something to entertain and inform themselves with, so when thinking of my film I should make it interesting, something that will mean the audience will not get bored, a bored audience will not be entertained. Entertainment is another gratification that they will most likely want to get from my documentary. However I believe that all members of the audience will be consuming my documentary for different uses and gratifications because we are all individuals.  

I can entertain the audience in many different way, the main way of attracting an audience is having intriguing content, then editing it together in a fast pace interactive way. I also plan to include subtitles and animations to excite them.

Blumler and Katz talk about an active audience who empathise with what they are watching, they will relate to what is being said. In this sense it means that my audience will relate to what is being said because those who I am interviewing are the in the same group as my target audience, so in some ways it can be seen as social interaction and security through knowledge.

In my film, there is one man who addresses the fact that he believes our government does not know what they are doing. For some people they will agree or disagree with his statement because that is human nature to have different opinions. Correlation with  what the man says can spark more interest in the audience and lead them to go on and consume more media related to what he said. Similarly, dissagreeing with the mans opinion will grab the audience to continue watching, for a different reason. 

The audience could be looking for transmission in my film, seeking the norms that we all have, as society will all relate to certain things, and some of these may be found within my film, such as some of the ideas that the interviewees have about what they want to be. 

Whether my audience wants entertainment is dependant on circumstances, they choose to consume based on their needs. 

In relation to my film I do not think that the Hypodermic Needle theory is relevant because it is only short in length so they cannot simply sit down and 'zone out' . My audience are not passive. 

This audience theory is useful for 'Speaking Out' becuase considering why my audience is consuming the documentary will influence how I produce and develop my main and ancillary texts, because I am producing them for my target audience I will make them relate to the demands of my target audience. 

Audience Theory

Hegemony: 

The cultural term 'hegemony' refers to process of making, maintaining and reproducing the governing sets of meanings of a given culture. it is the idea the the static form of life where everything is how it is meant to be is instituted by the people in charge wanting to keep it as it is, those in power want to stay in power by keeping everything how it is.

Gramsci's theory of hegemony: 

The media have always had a key role in teaching people to do things in ways that support power structures. Thus the media can be seen to support structures such as government, capitalism / corporations and patriarchy. For example, Captain America, he is the man who was built to protect America - from the outside from people who don't believe or understand the American values would view him as someone who attacks those who don't submit to the American way of living. 

Reception theory Stuart Hall: 

Emphasises how the reader, viewer or audiences respond to a text. Introduced by the theorist Stuart Hall, he developed reception theory by applying it to media and communications studies. His development of reception theory focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience in the context of media hegemony. 

- The meaning of the text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader. 

- A 'text' is not simply passively accepted by the audience. The reader / viewer interprets the meaning of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. 

Encoding and Decoding. 

Encoding: 

Refers to the organisation of signs into codes.

Decoding: 

Refers to the process by which readers generate meaning from them. 

Halls encoding - decoding model of communication suggests that whatever analysis of textual meaning a critic may undertake, it is far from certain which of the identified meanings, if any, will be activated by actual readers / audiences / consumers. 

Hall addressed the issue of how people make sense of media texts, presenting three hypothetical methods of decoding: 

-The 'preferred' reading.

-The 'negotiated' reading.

-The 'oppositional' reading. 

However, the social situations of readers / viewers / listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. 

Dominant hegemonic position: 

When an audience interprets the message as it was meant to be understood, they are operating in the dominate code. This results in a 'preferred reading' - You understand what they want you to understand. 

'Preferred reading' - the dominant ideology is typically inscribed as the 'preferred reading'. 'Dominant' readings are produced by those whose social situations favours the preferred reading. 

'Negotiated reading' - Not all audiences many understand what media producers take for granted.There may be some acknowledgement of differences in understanding. Negotiated positions are the result of the audience struggling to understand the dominant position or experiencing dissonance with those views. 

'Oppositional reading' - the social position of some audiences puts them in direct conflict with the dominant position. these media consumers understand a text's contextual (the setting of something) inflections but decode its messages by oppositional means.

Stuart Halls Reception Theory will be helpful to me in the making of my film because the audience will relate to the interviewees. So because of this theory i do not have to put any input into the forming of this relationship because it will form naturally. 

The Runners - Example of a Short Documentary

The Runners, is a short documentary, which explores the lives of runners by asking them questions, similar to that of our documentary. 

By using this as an example I hope to learn more about how it is best to film our documentary both through camera shots, editing and talking to people. 

 

In these shots shown below The Runners are placed roughly centred in a medium shot, this is conventional to a short documentary and a code that we will use when filming. However these shots have the subjects running in them so the image is often shakey, to prevent this happening we will use a tripod where possible. It will also be easier to film because our subjects will be standing still. 
Medium shots are brilliant for capturing emotions without getting too in the subjects face, allowing for natural emotions to be conveyed, especially if the subject is not used to talking to a camera. 

The Runners also uses conventions such as establishing shots that show background information related to the subject in the documentary. In this case it is shots of the park, trees, running feet. When we film in Camden we plan on using grafiti, people, traffic and the market in general to establish the busy and vibrant atmosphere. Hopefully these shots will also help to engage our audience as it gives them an insight into the area we will be filming in.

Titles are simple and clear, in fact this is the only title that is presented not in the credits. It concentrates all the attention on what the runners themselves are saying. 
However when we produce our documentary we plan on including a description before the main body of the documentary gets underway to explain the theory and purpose of what is going on so that the audience understand. The Runners throws you straight into the action, we want to ease the audience in. 



The credits are unusually long for a short documentary, conventionally some of these titles would be integrated into the beginning of the film.
We plan on using a similar structure to these credits but letting them roll faster, on a clean background so as not to detract from them, making them look clearer. 

Audience Theory - Part Two

Two Step Flow

Analysing voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign, Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" for example Rupert Merdoch. 

These opinion leaders then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a "two step flow". 

This has diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm. 

The Uses and Gratifications model

The uses and gratifications model emphasises what the audience does with the media presented to them, here influence lies with the consumer. 

Laswell and Wright

Two theorists, Lasswell (1948) and Wright (1960), identified four basic functions of mass communication:

Surveillance

Correlation

Cultural Transmission

Entertainment

Surveillance 

Surveillance of the environment refers to the media's collection and distribution of information e.g. we know who was elected Mayor of London because it was in the newspaper; we know whether to wear a sweater to school/work because the radio weather forecast said it would be chilly today.  

Correlation

Correlatoin of parts of society refers to the media's interpretive or analytical activities We know that the current recession has had a hugely damaging effect on small businesses up and down the country because of the feature on Newsnight and the photo news story in the Guardian's business section. e.g. natural disasters would be shown on the news like the hurricane in Haiti, adverts for aid donations from the red cross would also mean you correlate. e.g. Blue Peter addresses issues that children learn in school, but also acts as entertainment. 

Transmission 

Transmission of the social heritage relates to the media's ability to communicate values, norms, and styles across time in between groups. What were typical attitudes towards file sharing in the noughties? Hundreds of online editorials news features, dramas and documentaries produced during the decade will give you the answer. E.g. Downton Abbey tell us what things were like 100 years ago, what people looked like, what was important to them etc. About our culture, our society. 

Entertainment

Entertainment means the media's ability to entertain or amuse.

(John Reith, first General Managaer of the BBC, summarised the BBC's purpose in three words: educate, inform, entertain; this remains part of the organisation's mission statement to this day.) So the BBC puts on shows like Strictly Come Dancing. 

Uses and Gratifications 

In 1974, Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch make five basic assumptions which provide a framework for understanding the correlation between media and audiences. 

 1. The audience is active.

An important part of mass media use is goal oriented. 

Patterns of media use are shaped by definite expectations of what certain kinds of content have to offer the audience member. 

For entertainment or to be informed, you look at media because you want the entertainment or information. 

2. In the mass communication process audience to a significant degree use their own initiative when linking their need gratification to the media choices they make.

This places a strong limitation on theorizing about any form of straight-line effect of media content on attitudes and behaviour. 

3. The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction. ]The needs served by mass communication constitute only a segment of the wider range of human needs, and the degree to which they can be adequately met through mass media consumption varies. 

The media has to compete with other things such as meeting friends, eating so a TV programme really has to sell itself to you, otherwise you won't watch it. 

4. Many of the goals of mass media use can be derived form data supplied by individual audience members themselves. 

People are sufficiently self-aware to be able to report their interests and motives in particular cases, or at least to recognise them when confronted with them in an intelligible and familiar verbal formulation. 

5. Value judgements about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended wile audience orientations are explored on their own terms. e.g. the X factor is trash, to watch the programme you withhold that opinion, otherwise you wouldn't watch it. It is the study of why people watch the trash anyway. 

Blumler and Katz

The uses and gratifications approach emphasises motives and the self-perceived needs of audience members.

Blumler and Katz concluded that different people can use the same communication message for very different purposes. 

e.g. boyfriend and girlfriend going to a movie, girlfriend typically interested in the romantic story, the boyfriend watching for the action or crime in the film. They want different things from that media. 

The same media content may gratify different needs for different individuals, we are all unique. 
There is not a single definitive way that people uses media. 
There are as many reason s for using the media as there are media users. 
e.g. one person feels down so they watch a comedy, one person is looking for entertainment of their favourite sort, one person is watching it to make fun of it. 

Basic needs, social situation, and the individual's background, such as experience, interests, and education, affect people's ideas about what they want from media and which media best meets their needs. 
e.g. You have a strict upbringing, you watch a movie that you don't identify with as a form of escapism. 


McQuail

McQuail's classification provides the following 4 groups of reasons for media use:
Information
Personal Identity
Integration and Social Interaction
Entertainment

These four catagories can be broken down even further, e.g. entertainment can be broken into escapism or mindless entertainment etc...

Information
finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world; it is human instinct to know what is going on... 
seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices; you have a broken bike and you go on youtube to watch a tutorial on how to fix it...
satisfying curiosity and general interest; more like documentary, maybe you're curious about veganism...
learning; self education; I want to know more about the animals in the world so I'm going to watch a David Attenborourgh documentary. 
gaining a sense of security through knowledge.

Personal Identity
Finding reinforcement for personal values; who you are, e.g. you wear Doc Martins all the time because that is who you are - you may use some form of media to reinforce that that is a who you are.
Finding models of behaviour; 
Identifying with valued others (in the media); McFly fans like meeting other McFly fans, identifying through their passion through the band. 
Gaining insight into oneself. 

Integration and Social Interaction (Personal relationships)
Gaining insight into the circumstances of others; social empathy; you might want to find more about whats going on in the world because you want to empathise with the people there this could then be the reason you watch a documentary on the event. 
Identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging; people identify with McFly because they feel a sense of community with other fans.
Finding a basis for conversation  and social interaction; Watching Stranger Things or Football because its really interesting and you need to talk to someone about it. Using the media to create a social interaction when there was none before. 
Having a substitute for real-life companionship; Siri. Using the media for relationships rather than real life people.
Helping to carry out social roles: People watch different things to what others watch, a teenager to a business person.
Enabling one to connect with family, friends and society; giving you something to connect to people with.

Entertainment
escaping, or being diverted from problems; you choose based on your mood.
relaxing; mood. 
getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment; listen to music you like, or music from around the world because you're interested and curious to find out about it. 

Mission Selfie - Example of a Short Documentary

Mission Selfie is an example of a Short Documentary that has influenced me when filming my short documentary.

I will discuss the codes and conventions of short documentaries, using this as the example, and how this has influenced my own piece.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p044wdn0?suggid=p044wdn0


Here are some examples of side profiles, although in Mission Selfie the cameras are hand held by the camera men themselves, facing them, our shots aim to be similar to these.
Side profile shots used in this documentary allow the audience not only to focus on the narrator, but also their surroundings which are relevant to the content.

As well as side profiles we also plan on some of our subjects talking straight into the camera lens, through media close up shots, so that the audience concentrate on what they are saying and not the environment surrounding them. This concept is shown to the left, although a side profile shot, it takes in both of the narrators, because they are the only subject of the shot, as outside it is dark.





To the left is an example of what it looks like when the narrator is talking into the camera lens, face on.

Mission Selfie also uses subtitles, as shown above, to aid the audience at times when the audio is not as easy to understand because of diabetic sound interference. 

These subtitles are basic, yet easy to read. They do not detract form the shot, but also the text is big enough for all audiences. 

We plan to do the same in our documentary in parts where background noise is disrupting, some of our footage already shows signs of this, as we film in a typically noisy environment. 

These are two examples of how subtitles can be used to introduce people, or subjects into the
documentary. Here we see two different peoples names and their association with the content of the documentary. These kinds of titles are conventional to documentaries because they are a simple and informative way of displaying and reinforcing key information to the audience.

Main titles, such as the one shown on the left, are typical to modern short documentaries such as this one. The text style is minimalistic, basic, yet also pleasing to the eye. This is meant to engage the audience because they would not be drawn to watch something they did not like the look of. We must replicate this idea in our short documentary so that we can catch the audiences eyes as well.

Mission Selfie also uses a variety of different titles, this helps the audience differentiate between information, the finer details, such as peoples names do not obstruct the shot, whereas the key information, essential to the understanding of the content of the documentary is placed centrally and presented in a less passive way, shown below.  

Mission Selfie also uses shots to establish the location of the documentary by using natural signs, this shows the authenticity and realism of the documentary, a key code of documentaries. 

Codes and Conventions of Short Documentaries

In our short documentary we will be using some of these codes and conventions, for example the realism that is the basis of all documentaries. This means everything is original, the sound, lighting, no actors, instead we will film people in the street, and we will be filming outside. Filming these people we will use the technique of 'talking heads' asking them a question, and then letting them discuss their answer, into the camera lens. The realistic approach to the documentary will also be supported by text and titles, such as the questions we asked our audience.

Our documentary is a Reflexive Documentary, because it is a reflexion of what the subjects discuss with us.

Discussion concerning our Project

My partner (Bea) and I had a discussion that addressed the idea of extending our short film into a TV programme, we both took an interest to this idea and so now our documentary is an episode in a series called 'Speaking Out'.

This episode belongs to a 6 part series, and is called 'Speaking Out - We Could've Been Anything'. This episode is the first in the series, and explores the question "If you could be anything what would you be and why?"

We decided that 'Speaking Out' would be broadcast online, as we believe that is the future of TV. This makes the series very current and so it will appeal to a wide audience, every one has easy access to online TV Channels such as BBC 3 and Channel 4 as well as BBC iPlayer. This accessibility and the length of the episodes, approximately 15-20 minutes long episodes provide a quick-fix of entertainment ideal for viewers who have busy lives, as well as for those who have time.

Examples of the platforms we would broadcast on are these:

BBC 3 is an online channel, we think it would be ideal for our TV series because of similar documentary series we have found on this website such as 'Men Who Sleep in Trucks'. BBC 3 also has a large and young audience, this relates to our target audience of young adults. 




BBC iPlayer is a combination of all the TV shows on the British Broadcasting Company in one place, including all BBC 3's programmes. You can watch anything on the website at any time, meaning you can stream the shows that are currently playing and watch them online, or catch up later, this is also an ideal platform for our series because it is already used by our target audience. 

Genre Theory Lesson

How can we identify genre?

Conventions: 

Narrative 
and

Cinematography 

Mise-en-scene (props costume, lighting, set, character performance) language, production techniques 

(editing, camera angles and movement, structure, filters, effects, sound etc.)

Narrative structure (linear, non-linear, abstract, narrative, etc.)

Symbolic codes (e.g. a cowboy hat)

Action codes (body language, hand gestures etc. 

Why is genre important?

For Producers of media texts:

It gives them a pattern for construction, a template,

genre pieces have an established audience who are easy to market to

certain personnel can develop their skills working within a particular genre (e.g. horror make up specialists)

Stars can associate themselves with certain genres e.g. Will Ferrell is known for a certain type of slapstick comedy, and his face on a poster instantly tells audiences what kind of movie they are likely to see if he is in it. 

Fans of the genre know the codes, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time, so you don't have explain everything the audience knows the codes

Distributers:

Clear channels for marketing and distribution - easily targetable audience

concentration of distribution resources - no point in trying to get football matches to a non-sports audience because they will not want to watch it.

Fans of a genre as a whole can easily be persuaded to buy other texts in the same genre e.g. action movies which provide a structure for the retail outlets like HMV, amazon etc. 

Steve Neal

'genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations' - he is saying that genre is something that gets repeated and repeated just with slight differences each time. 

and

'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre'

 Two ideas can be explored using this quote:

1. How you have used obvious codes, iconography and techniques that are evident in existing media texts that conform to the genre.

2. How you have made some subtle changes to these genre expectations (challenging the conventions?)

point: "Steve Neale suggests that genre is 'a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations'

evidence: What evidence do you have from your chosen piece of coursework that supports this?

[be specific and describe in detail]

Refer to professional examples that have inspired you; being specific.

Analysis: Why did you do this?

What was the purpose?

What was the effect of this on the audience?

Do you agree with Neale? Why?

Conclusion:

Using Steve Neale's ideas concerning genre I believe that our documentary is 'a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations' which makes his theory incredibly relevant to 'The Big Question'. Of course there have been other productions similar to ours but none are exactly the same, each detail makes the media text separate from the other.

John Hartley 

Argues that 'genres are agents of ideological closure - they limit the meaning-potential of a given text'
In other words, genres limit what you can do.

John Hartley notes that 'the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times'
Here he is saying that if something can belong to different genres it becomes a hybrid, this can come into different terms, 
a hybird genre - serenity, firefly

Conclusion:
I think that this is an interesting concept because, ultimately, it defies 'the norm' but at the same time genre should not be a limit unless the producer makes it one.

John Fisk 

Defines genres as 'attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences.' 
He is saying that genre is for our own convenience, we are lazy, its about us not caring enough to label things properly. 

Conclusion:
I completely agree with this, when coming up with ideas for our production it is so much easier to think in terms of genre and develop a typical story line from that. However in the future I will try and bear this theory in mind, pushing myself to come up with more original ideas.

Laura Mulvey 'The Male gaze' theory

The camera is masculine. The camera is used to observe women from the perspective of a male. This often results in fragmented shots, close ups or tracking shots of the female form. 

This happens in some genres more than others, typically the male genres such as action, e.g. James Bond.

Conclusion:
Laura Mulvey's theory is true, and it is a perfect representation of how the media presents women today.
Similarly, I think that we are now also developing a 'female gaze' similar to that of the 'male gaze' pushing stereotypes onto us.

Claude Levi-Strauss - Binary opposition

The contrast between two mutually exclusive concepts or things that creates conflict and drives a narrative
e.g. good/evil or knowing something and not knowing something, like in 'Finding Nemo', they don't know where Nemo is and they're trying to find out.
The route of all drama is in conflict.

Conclusion:
Without binary opposition a story line would be boring, the whole point is to attract attention, an audience. I will use this in the future to make sure I am constructing interesting and engaging pieces of media.

Roland Barthes - Enigma code

A question that is not immediately answered and thus draws an audience into a text.

 A discovery is made at the beginning of a music video. The truth behind the discoveries is an enigma. 
Is there a decision that is made in the video that we don't know the answer to?

It is a puzzle for the audience that keeps them interested, again using 'Finding Nemo' will Marlin be able to find Nemo?

Conclusion:
Enigma codes are something that I will use in 'The Big Question'. The audience will be drawn into thinking and guessing at what the subjects would be, making it more successful.