Impact of Media Theory research and audience survey research

JOE TURNER

Genre Conventions

Research is important when you are planning to create a product. Without the necessary information you might not create something that suits the genre or style that you are intending to create. That is why before we created our horror trailer I conducted research.

The first part I researched was genre conventions. Seeing as the trailer I would make is for a horror film I looked into horror and its different sub genres as well as the conventions that this genre holds. Setting is a key part of the genre. Often horror films take place in desolate locations often where a character is alone. For our horror film idea the majority of it takes place in an abandoned village or an empty wood. These are conventional settings for horror and can be seen in actual media texts such as The Blair Witch Project or The Crazies. Often these settings have low key lighting or motivated lighting. This creates an eerie atmosphere and shadows which give the audience a sense of not knowing what’s happening. This is what helps create fear. These elements we have taken into account when planning our trailer.

Props are also heavily featured in horror, often stabbing weapons such as knives and axes. These props are evident in slashers such as Halloween or Psycho. The idea for our horror film is quite science fiction based so to make it more sci-fi horror the use of these settings and props will give it fear factor and make it scary.

D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T.D on’tI gnoreS etting T echnical I conography N arrative C haracterisation T hemes

Narrative

There are many different narrative theories that can relate to media texts. Classical Hollywood theory, by Todorov, looks at all stories following the same structure; it starts with an equilibrium which is then disrupted, which is then followed by recognition of the disruption, an attempt to fix the disruption and a reinstatement of equilibrium. As well as this a theorist names Vladimir Propp who stated that all stories have the same character types; a hero, a villain, a donor, a dispatcher, a false hero, a side kick, a damsel and the damsel’s father. Another theory is Binary opposition by Claude Levi-Strauss. This is the theory that there are opposites of everything, for example the natural/super natural or light/dark. The last theory I looked at, by Bordwell and Thompson, is the theory of space and time, that everything that happens within a narrative is “a chain of events in cause effect relationship, occurring in space and time”

Looking into these theories and how they relate with current media texts has allowed us to put them in effect with our horror trailer. After carrying out this research I have a good idea of how these theories also relate to horror conventions which is what will make our trailer suitable for the genre.

Representation

Representation is another aspect of horror that I looked into, particularly the representation of females. The first theorist I looked into, Jeremy Tunstall, stated that females had only four main roles; domestic, consumer, marital and sexual. Within media texts this theory is often enforced by females doing actions that represent them as house wives, mothers or sexual objects.

The last theory I looked into is the Male Gaze, by Mulvey, this theory looks at how the cinematography, or camera angles, subject females to the male gaze making them an ‘Object of Male Gaze’.

Another theorist I looked into, Carol Clover, came up with the Final Girl theory. In this, Clover looked into texts that represented females as strong, not just an object of male gaze but can in fact be represented as strong and fighting back. However when the female is represented in this way they are often depicted as boyish.

To conduct this research I looked into the film The Cabin in the Woods. This film has a perfect example of different representations of females.

Audiences and Institutions

With every film there is an audience and institution. To understand both I looked into The Woman in Black, while doing this I learned that there is a primary and secondary audience. It is the institutions job to entice both. Many things can define the primary audience such as demographic, psychographic, preference of actors or genre. Secondary audiences are less specific for example they could be a fan base or horror enthusiasts.

It’s the institutions job to distribute and market the film. All films have a different budget which is what both elements rely on. Depending on the budget the marketing might be big or small and vary across a range of platforms, it can even affect how long the marketing lasts. The budget will also affect the distribution and if the budget is big or small will affect how many cinemas it is exhibited in.

Audience Survey

After conducting research into current media texts and theories, we created a survey that would help us plan our trailer and make our film idea one that people would enjoy. To do this we used an online survey service which allowed us to share the link through social media. This meant we could get as many people to answer the survey as possible to give us the best possible idea of how to come up with a film idea that people would enjoy. It also means we would know how to target our primary audience and even our secondary audience. From the survey we found that the majority of people that responded were students and liked our film idea and would see it in a cinema, if not wait for a DVD release. It also helped us as many people felt that it might be too science fiction to be a horror which we addressed by changing some elements of the film idea.