Post five: Audience Theory & My Short Film.

EFFECTS MODEL:

Hypodermic Needle Theory - 1920's

• The message the producers wish to present you in their text is directly 'injected' into the audience.
• This would make the audience a passive recipient of the message.
• During the 1920's the mass media e.g. newspapers were known as a type of 'authority'.

2 - step flow - 1940's

• The 'message' of a film goes from producer via a third party to the audience - the 'third party' doesn't have to be a person e.g. word of mouth, the film itself, a film critic.
• 
  
  According to this theory the audience is yet again a passive recipient.

Uses and gratifications - 1960's

• During this period of time the producer is trying to reflect what the audience wants/needs.
• What we actually get from the text.
• In this theory the audience is active.

Reception theory - 1980's

• Stuart Hall - Encoding: Producers make decisions that essentially create the 'meaning' Decoding: Audience breaking down the codes to find the 'message'.
• E.g. IF the audience reveal the intended 'message' it is preferred reading.
• Negotiated reading - This is where the audience adapt the preferred meaning to fit what they desire the 'meaning' to be.

Analysis of 4 short films:

Wasp (2003) - Directed and written by Andrea Arnold

Andrea Arnold's 'Wasp', 2003 was the first of the five short films that I watched during the process of independent study:

- The plot: Zoë, the central protagonist is a single mother who lives in a grotty, run-down house with her four children ranging in age. The family's financial circumstance is dire, they cannot afford to put food on the table, after a raged argument with another mother from the area in which they are situated Zoë's ex-boyfriend, or so we assume from the interaction they have drives past and eventually asks her out on a date. She proceeds to tell him that the four children she has with her are in fact not hers and that she is only baby-sitting. It soon becomes clear that this will be her first date in a long time. Zoë meets her ex-boyfriend up a local pub, leaving the children outside of the pub. After several events occurring in both the mother's situation and in the children's a wasp flies into the youngest child mouth, at this point the ex-boyfriend finds out that the kids are hers due to her reaction.

 

- I believe that 'Wasp' is a representation of 'broken Britain', it is meant to create a sense of moral panic through it's presentations of the diabolical state of the lives which the children in the short film are forced to live, through the sense of the numbers of single mothers rising and the concept of children mothering other children. Due to it's subject matter, 'wasp' is a highly unpleasant and to an extent uncomfortable film to watch, to say that 'Zoë' (Natalie Press) doesn't love her children would be untrue but due to her childish irresponsibility and her selfishness her loneliness is presented to the audience. As a viewer it is hard to feel any form of empathy or sympathy towards 'Zoë' as you watch her hungry children eat sugar when there is not food in the house, scrounge a portion of chips off of the floor when someone has dropped them and amuse themselves by playing on the streets.

The Most Beautiful Man In The World (2002) - Directed and written by Alicia Duffy

'The Most Beautiful Man In The World' 2002 written and directed by Alicia Duffy is the second short film I watched.

- The plot: The central protagonist is a young girl of the age of probably around ten years old, her name is 'Lacey'. She is seen on a on a 'normal' day, she watches television, plays with her dog, rides a bike and then leaves her house to explore surrounding fields. Whilst exploring the fields, a man finds her dog, the man then removes a lady-bird off of her shoulder once she has approached him. This is the first dialogue we see 'Lacey' engage in, her mother is then seen to appear at the door, 'Lacey' goes back towards her house with her dog.

- 'In this an innocent or dangerous world? Is Lacey in trouble?' I believe that many people whilst watching this short film would assume that 'Lacey' is in some sort of danger when she meets the man, due to the society of the 21st century people would assume that the man is out to harm the little girl. I personally think that the message of this short film is not revolving around the man atall, infact I would go as far as to say that he is merely a 'catalyst' for the movement of the film. The film could arguably be a representation of the isolation of children; the girl has no interaction with her mother whom we see in several shots and this 'stranger' whom we see is part of the only interaction 'lacey' has throughout the entirity of the film is merely giving the little girl the attention she seeks and craves.

Spider (2008) - Directed by Nash Edgerton

- The plot: 'It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.'

About A Girl (2001) - Written by Julie Rutterford and directed by Brian Percival

'About A Girl' 2001 written by Julie Rutterford is the third short film I watched.

- The plot: The central protagonist is a young girl who's the product of a broken home; living with her mother and younger sibling the nameless 'girl' possesses hopeless dreams of becoming a 'pop star'. In her dysfunctional home life her father plays a very small role in seeing her one day a week and taking her to the football and to the pub. The 'girl' never tells the audience her secret directly but at the end of the film as the audience we realise she has had a baby as she disposes of the child's body in the local canal.  

- 'About a girl' winner of a 'best short film' bafta I believe similarly to 'Wasp' revolves around the pivital and controversial issue of the effect of 'Broken Britain' on children. The characterisation of 'the girl' sets her up to be both a lonely and towards the end of the film vulnerable despite her confidence speech and mannerisms. I think that generally the message of the film is about child neglect and this leading to the protagonist having to grow up too quickly this leading her into the teenage mother stereotype.

Post four: Genre as a media concept

Understanding the Term Genre

All of the information and quoting in the following slides are refrenced from 'McDougall, J.2006. The Media Teacher's Book. London: Hodder arnoldrevolved'.

Slide 1:

This slide revolves around Robert Altman (an American film director and critic) and his theories.

Theories:

1) 'That genres are defined by producers and easily recognised by audiences'.

2) 'That texts 'belong' clearly to a particular genre in each case'.

Generally due to the codes and conventions used in films it is relatively easy to distinguish what genre or sub genre the film is.

Sub genres - the mutation of genres to incorporate other genres.

3) 'That genres develop in predictable ways'.

Some  genres develop in predictable ways such as 'Sci-fi' films, due to technological development e.g. speical effects the genre will develop as technology does.

4) 'That texts in a genre share key characteristics'.
All texts in a specific genre will share certain characteristics, otherwise known as conventions. If the text did not share any of these characteristics it would not be classed as the genre, conventions must be met to follow a genre. However, the market are always wanting something new and exciting and in order to do this some conventions have to be broken but in order for the next new film to be new and exciting they must then take the convention breaking further.
- Creating something new - next films has to go further than the last.

5) 'That genres are ideological'.
Definition of Ideology

The technical formular for ideology is 'idea + group + power = ideology'; in the case of a genres is could be argued according to this formula that they are ideological the Idea (genre) + the group (audience) + the power (producer) = ideological. However it could be argued that producers have to and do both listen to and meet audience demands.

6) 'That they  are not specifically located in history'.

7) 'That genre critics are distanced from the practice of genre, or it's working'.
- Do not work with genre closely so who are they to say what genre is or isn't.

Slide 2:
Slide two is based around 'thoughts on genre'
'Might ways in which we label and divide objects, texts and people be constructed in ways that serve particular interests, rather than in logical, natural patterns?' - McDougall, J.
- This quote is revolved around the division of films into genres and sub-genres, logically and automatically people possess a habit of organising films into ‘logical natural patterns’. A example of a sub genre created using ‘logical natural patterns’ would be a romantic comedy – something like a ‘romantic horror’ does not work therefore it is not ‘logical natural patterns’.                                                          

'Should we read genre as a noun or adjective?' - Altman, R.
- Read as a noun because it is there and we are all aware of it
This question raised by Altman goes back to the original question and main questioning of the word genre itself. Genre could be considered a noun due to the fact that is it present and we are all consciously aware of it, it is also relatively like an object to an extent, like a label but a mental one, it posesses object like qualities. On the other hand genre could be instantly as an adjective as it could be viewed as a 'descriptive word'; the word 'genre' describes something about a film. Genre could be logically argued to be either/both a noun or an adjective.


Slide 3:
'Tomatoe puree' - where would you find it in a supermarket?'
'What would happen to this item if it were shelved in another part of the shop?'
'Would the thing itself be any different?'

The questions involving tomatoe puree although seeming both strange and irrelevant to the studying of genre theorty raised a lot of logical questions that at first appear to be simple but made us as a group think very differently about the genre theory as a whole.

- When asked where we thought we would find tomoatoe puree in a super market there were several very different yet valid and reasonable answers; some people said in the chillers, as to keep it cool. Some people said down a condoments isle, pairing the puree with food it would logically be placed with such as pasta. Similarly to the tomatoe puree this happens in the process of catagorising films, certain people will focus on specific aspects of the film and catagorise it according to those aspects or codes and conventions where as others will focus on other aspects this resulting in people placing the same film into different genres. This question and the following two prodcued a debate about genre, the use of it and whether it is needed.
Slide 4:
For you take as students when considering genre is NOT 'how does genre work? BUT why does genre work?

After studying and fully understanding all of the critical opinions and points raised in the previous slides I would personally state that the term 'genre' works due to the interests served through the process of labelling a film. When giving a film a label, a genre, it is not only benefitting the audience as they can get a grasp of the kind of films they enjoy but helps the film industry due to the fact that this labelling makes the process of identifying a gap in the market a much more simple process and shows what films are popular and where. So the use of genre raises and lowers the popularity of films along side the success of the film industry generally.


Slide 5:
'According to Neale (1980), gene treory is to do with circulation of expectation in circulation between industries, media texts and audiences. This leads to 'regulated variety'. Hartley (1999) describes a contract between producer and audience which 'disciplines' choices and reduces desires.


Slide 6:
So a grasp on genre theory actually leads you away from the notion that genre is an easy, blunt tool with which to produce texts along conventional lines.

For Neale, genre is a state of combinations more or less randomly distributed, and genre texts are those which form particular patterns of combinations, or atleast are seen that way by audiences or critics.