Audience Theories

There are three theories of audience:

1. The Effects Model or The Hypodermic Model
2. The Uses and Gratifications Model
3. Reception Theory

These help us to answer:

Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?

How audiences consume texts?

What happens when they consume texts?

We can apply these to a media text to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between the texts and the audience.

Critical Theory: Levi-Strauss - Narrative

Levi-Strauss also proposed a theory on narrative. His theory says that a narratives structure is dependant on BINARY OPPOSITIONS. These are pairs of opposite values that reveal the structure of media texts., and it is the conflict of these values that drive the narrative.

For example;

Male <-> Female

Old <-> Young

Fat <-> Thin

The most common of these is gender, due to stereotypical values that conflict. This is particularly used in the 'Rom-Com' genre of films.

Masculine Stereotypes: Strong, Heavy, Hard-Working, Competitive, Dominant.

Feminine Stereotypes: Weak, Light, Passive, Emotional, Co-operative.

In relation to my music video, this theory has practically no relevance, but this is only due to the fact that there are not many opposites. There is only one main character and he works alone, without help. Meaning that no parallels can be drawn between him and someone of opposite stature. Other characters have very little emotional effect on the detective so we do not necessarily side with any one person, although we do want the detective to succeed. Due to this, this theory has little relevance to my music video.

Critical Theory: Tzvetan Todorov - Narrative

Todorovo also proposed a critical theory for narration. Unlike Propp's theory it relates to the time and events that occur and does not related directly to the characters, just the events and actions they undertake.

Todorov's theory suggests that all stories and narratives follow the same structure:

To begin with there is EQUILIBRIUM. This means that all is good, usual and no problems face the protagonists or people we are following in the story.

(For example, the sun is shining GoodTown and all is well and happy)

This is then DISRUPTED by an event, often caused by another character, usually the antagonist. (e.g. Suddenly, the Evil Lord BadGuy says he is going to take over the village with his rabble of henchmen)

This causes an ENIGMA. This means questions are asked, why is this happening? what do we do? why do we do it? who should do it? The answer to these questions often lies with the protagonist.

(e.g The lowly Stable boy Harry steps up to the challenge with his steed, to win the heart of the beautiful princess)

These enigmas are then solved and overcome, resulting in REVOLUTION.

(e.g Stable boy Harry defeats Evil Lord BadGuy and wins the heart of the beautiful Princess)

This all results in a NEW EQUILIBRIUM.

(e.g. Harry and the Princess get married, Harry becomes King and everyone lives happily ever after. Or at least until the next disruption)

This theory is cyclical, which often results in the production of sequels to stories, using the same characters again, with different antagonists and some new people to help along the way.

In relation to my music video, this theory holds a lot of valid ideas. in fact, it relates perfectly!

The detective is walking along happily in equilibrium when he becomes disrupted, when he trips over the wire. Enigma then occurs, why is this wire here? where does it lead? what should I do? The detective the honourably steps up and follows the wire to answer these questions. He overcomes barriers such as being chased and run over, until he eventually comes to the band practice where he is thrown out, leading to a new equilibrium of the band finishing out the song.

Critical Theory: Vladimir Propp - Narrative

Propp's theory was produced after Propp himself read 100 folk tales, and came across a link that bound them all. He found that across all the stories there were only 8 character types and these characters fit into all other stories.

These characters are:

The Protagonist

The Antagonist

The Donor

The Helper

The Father Figure

The Dispatcher

The Princess

The False Hero

The purpose of our music video was to promote a song, so unfortunately doesn't give us anything near a tale of grand proportions, but it does have its own small narrative.

The Protagonist (or The Hero) in my video is clearly the detective as he is in the spotlight for most of the time and we follow him on his journey. He provides the video with a focal character and we feel for what happens to him, which tends to be humour and happiness due to the type of video we have produced. The band members could also be seen as protagonists as they are providing us with the pleasure of listening to their song with which the video is promoting.

There are a few antagonists as the only constant character is the detective. We could say that the wire itself is an antagonist as the detective trips over it, and it leads him through troublesome areas that see him chased, run over and thrown out. The dog, the security guard, the old man, the cinema viewers and the golfer are all antagonists as they hinder the detective along his journey.

The detective could also be called a false hero. This is because he eventually gets to the band practice and prevents the other protagonists, the band, from playing their song for a period of time. This in turn would make the security guard "The Helper" by removing the detective from the bands practice.

Unfortunately our video does not use all character types, but in the future we hope to make more that fit these profiles in other productions.

Critical Theory: Laura Mulvey - Feminism

Laura Mulvey argues with feminist views, which means that the production somehow detracts from being a woman. She argues in her theory that the camera is that of the "Male Gaze", which is active. The narrative is male directed in which they gaze towards female characters. So in many cases, females are simply used as a love interest or sexual desire for either those on screen or those in the audience. She believes that the narrative or plot/storyline of a production follows males, are influenced by males and flows mainly because of male participation.

This can be applied to our music video both positively and negatively.

Our video partially agrees with mulvey’s feminist theory as all of the cast are male and there is only one ‘woman’ in the whole video, but this is played by a male, and ‘she’ is very stereotypically shown in a red provocative dress. The woman figure is used for pure humour sense, so it could be said that we simply used a female to poke humour at. This is largely true but is also true for all of the characters in the video, most of whom are men. Either way, the view of women in our video is quite derogatory as for a few seconds she is supposed to be seen a sexually desirable, and is then poked fun at.

Audience Feedback: Survey Monkey

Yet again we used the trusty survey monkey to create a survey for our audience feedback; below are the questions we created and we should have the answers back in about a week, they will be shown in my evaluation.

Question 1: What Is Your Gender?

Question 2: How Old Are You?

Question 3: On a Scale of 1 to 10, How much Did You Enjoy The Music Video You Just Watched?

Question 4: What Was Your Favourite Part Of The Music Video?

Question 5: Does This Video Seem Professional or Amateur?

Question 6: In One Word, Could You Describe What You Thought Of the Video?

Question 7: Was There Any Point Of The Video You Didn't Like or Found Ineffective?

Questions 8: Finally, Would You Purchase The Song or Music Video?

Magazine Advert Finished

I've finished the magazine advert, below are two pictures of it, the advert itself and what the advert would look like if featured in UNCUT magazine.

In the UNCUT advert we're right next to a page featuring Foo Fighters . . . I'm especially happy about that :D