Section a 1b_task

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Page 1: Section a 1b_task

G325 Critical Perspectives in Media Exam Preparation

Section A: Theoretical evaluation of Production

There are two questions in Section A, which must both be answered.

Question 1(a) will ask you to DESCRIBE and EVALUATE your skills development across your production coursework for your Foundation Portfolio AND your Advanced Portfolio. You will be asked to refer one or two specific production practices, which could be either:

Digital Technology Creativity Research and Planning Post-Production Using conventions from real media texts

WE WILL PRACTICE QUESTION 1(a) NEXT WEEK

Question 1(b) will ask you to select ONE production (AS or A2) and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts is as follows:

Genre Narrative Representation Audience Media language

Task1: Read the level3/level 4 response to Question 1(b) from last year’s paper, along with the examiners response. Annotate using Ctrl-Alt M.

(b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.The concept of audience is fundamental to the making of a media text. A producer must take into account the age, social status and gender and interests of a target consumer in order to adjust the text to make it as appealing to them as possible. For my A2 coursework I created a horror called ‘The sleepover’. Classification of age appropriateness is important in audience identification. Films are screened by an external board and given a minimum age of viewers. Most horror films are rated 18, due to extreme gore, violence, sex and disturbance – not to mention emotional trauma which is why I chose to rate my film as 18 as my film was a very conventional slasher film.The Hypodermic Needle effect is the first audience theory. It originated in the 1920s when mass media first began to be popular. This suggests that a producer has an intended meaning which is definitely understood by the audience. In this theory the audience are completely passive. If this was applied to my text the audience wouldview the killing scenes and sex scenes and instantly replicate the actions. This 7 of course is unrealistic and this theory is often argued to be very simplistic and

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Hyperdermic needle theory applied
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Applied to her work
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Knowledge of the theory
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outdated, considering how much the media has developed this century. The uses and gratifications audience theory suggests than an audience consume particular texts in order to receive something from them. Bulmer and Katz identified four uses and gratifications as diversion (entertainment and escape from reality), surveillance (information), personal identity (seeing yourself reflected in the text and learning new values and personal relationships (seeking emotional interaction and substituting media relationships for your own). In my coursework, a consumer may use diversion - the horror trailer is escapist – a route away from reality and they would be entertained by the mystery and fear of my film. Diversion would also include catharsis that my trailer would enable, which is using the media as an outlet of emotion – they would experience horror in the safety of cinema. They would also experience the ‘personal identity’ stage in seeing themselves in, or, admiring, the good characters – particularly the ‘final girl’ character and her charming boyfriend, depending on gender of audience member. They would also have the personal relationships because they could feel emotion of the fear and sadness of the victims whilst substituting their emotional relationship with the friendships in my trailer or the main characters’ romantic relationship with her boyfriend. My audience would not use the surveillance stage as horror films are not intended to be instructional. The most modern and developed theory of audience is reception theory. This model based on Stuart Hall’s encoding model, suggests that a producer will encode a text and the audience will decode it. Their reading is affected by many contextual and personal factors such as age, social status, gender, current mood and personal experiences. I encoded my horror trailer as well as I could using beautiful, edgy, feminine characters which appeal to the female consumers. I used isolated settings which suggest to the audience that escape isn’t possible (deserted house, woods) this highlighting the experience of fear and panic that one hopes for when watching a horror film. I used acoustic codes in the form of a deep male voice over and jumpy, low orchestral score to hope that my audience will feel tension and suspense. My killer was masked and always appeared silent and in the shadows, connoting evil and dehumanising him hopefully creating a response of fear from the audience. My main target audience were males and females aged 18-30. I used attractive actors to appeal to the audience who would admire / desire them. The ‘cool’ stylish clothing adds to this. I used the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, showing a victim’s cleavage and the ‘final girl’ theory (hopefully creating a stronger feminist image to other women) to attract both genders. I used audience research in the form of questionnaires to find out my audiences preferences and dislikes in order to make my trailer meet their interests as fully as possible. I also asked for audience feedback on my first drafts which allowed me to make improvements based on the opinions of 20 18-30 year olds. They told me to exaggerate gore and violence more and use more threatening music which I then incorporated using iMovie so that me audience was tempted to watch my piece. I aimed my piece at a low social status as my trailer was a version of British teenagers experiencing the American slasher experience. I used strong language, popular music for soundtrack and fashionable clothing to hopefully attract this group.

This is a level 3 / level 4 borderline responseLevel 4 qualities –coherence, range of useful examples, ability to answer the question in sustained manner, relating of theory to practice. The understanding of Hall’s encoding / decoding model in relation to own work. The discussion of ‘effects’ early on is clear and relevant.

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Final features chosen
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How she improved through feedback
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General audience of her coursework
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Explains the effect to why it has been used
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Applied to coursework
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Knowledge of the theory
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Identified and applied the third theory
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Knowledge on the theory again and applied to her coursework
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Example of applying theory to her coursework
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Knowledge on the theory
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Knowledge of the theory
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Knowledge, answering the question
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Knowledge of society
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Level 3 qualities – the application of audience theories (insufficiently developed for level 4 – eg the ‘use of’ Mulvey, in the same paragraph as the use of questionnaires for feedback).

Task 2

In pairs, write a brief summary of the response for each section in the table below. Identify any areas of weakness in relation to the examiner’s report (these come later in the essay) and state how you might improve the response. Keep it brief!

Section Summary Improvements needed (if any)

IntroThe intro is very brief and accurately tells the reader the film she has analysed which is ‘the sleepover’ and what conventions she has used based around the audience theory.

Theory 1The first audience theory she applies is the hypodermic needle theory. She gives a small amount of background information about this and applies it in detail to her film ‘the sleepover’, such as the replication of the sex scenes.

Theory 2The uses and gratification audience theory is applied and explained about how the text must be in a specific order. She talks about the 4 uses and gratifications and applies it to their own piece of work. Information also includes diversion.

Theory 3The last theory is the audience of reception theory. Explaining how the audience decode the encoded text.

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Description of production and audience responses

The features she has used has been applied to her answer explain techniques used such as strong language and also tells us she has used audience feedback to improve.

Description of target audience and evaluation of responses

Her general target audience is both genders 18-30. After evaluating her responses this is how her target audience was chosen after making adjustments and improvements.

Task 3

Using the above as a guide, write your own plan in relation to either your A2 OR AS production coursework

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Task 4 (Homework)

Use your plan to write your own answer for homework, deadline next Monday.

Remember to use the activity completed before Easter on audience, available on Moodle, to help you.

1(b) Analyse ONE of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of AUDIENCE. (June 2011)

Audience theory is crucial when making decisions regarding an audience when presenting a media text. Many things must have thought behind decisions such as age, gender and social classes. My coursework I completed and will analyse regarding audience theory is a music magazine I completed called ‘Volume’. Volume is a magazine which focused on a rock and indie genre with similarities to magazines such as ‘Kerrang’. I completed a front cover, contents and a double page spread of the magazine. The reason behind the audience of both indie and rock was to increase the audience size which I can target.

In my magazine the hypodermic needle theory could be applied. When looking at the front cover of my magazine the idea of a mass audience being ‘injected’ with the influence of the main story could attract many people within the target audience. Using a central image for the main character involved in my magazine can influence people to read the magazine and find out more about what they are known to be on the front cover for. However on the other hand the theory can be seen to be out dated and my magazine may support this as the influence of a central image may not be as affected as many competitors will have similar designs and stories.

Another theory applied to the front cover of my magazine ‘Volume’ is the uses and gratifications theory. One of the four basic models is to identify what is in front of the audience. This can be met when the central image is a well-known music artist. Another is to entertain. This is used for escapism, the audience can read about my magazine which will then take their minds off every day problems as they can enjoy reading about their favorite artists. Lastly social interaction can be applied to my magazine because it is something that can be talked about between friends. The public can discuss the music magazine and the stories they have read within it.

The last theory is the reception theory. The theory has been created by Stuart Halls in the 1970’s, a much more recent theory. This can be applied to my music magazine on the double page spread because the audience can decode the story about ‘Rachel’ which I have encoded. The text can then go on to dominant, negotiated or preferred, depending on the audience’s views and opinions.