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.